-TheQuint.com A recent SBI report, which states that the informal economy has declined, avoids even defining ‘informal economy’. A recent edition of “Ecowrap”, a publication of the research team of the State Bank of India (SBI), has claimed that India’s informal economy has sharply declined from 52.4 per cent in 2017-18 to between 15 and 20 per cent in 2020-21 in the three years since 2017-18. This finding by the SBI research...

With the rise in Covid-19 daily new cases and daily new deaths since March this year, media reports (please click here and here) on migrant workers returning back to their native places (i.e. places of origin) from migration destinations (i.e. workplaces likes cities and large industrial towns to where the informal and low skilled workers from the marginalised sections of the society migrate seasonally, and sometimes for a longer duration,...

-Livemint.com/ PTI * 'Despite being the worst affected sector in Q1(due to lockdown), it is quite puzzling how manufacturing turned itself around in Q2,' says Soumya Kanti Ghosh, Group Chief Economic Adviser, SBI * There is evidence of inventory buildup that could act as a drag on future manufacturing growth, says Ghosh New Delhi: The surprise resilience shown by the manufacturing sector that restricted GDP contraction to only 7.5 per cent in September...

Most reports and studies by official agencies, international think tanks and private entities indicate the cataclysmic impact of the coronavirus pandemic on the economy and society. They anticipate that lockdowns imposed by various countries across the globe to reduce the exponential diffusion of COVID-19 (i.e. for flattening the curve by social distancing and quarantines) would adversely affect economic growth and disrupt supply chains in most sectors, on top of causing...

-PTI Economists at State Bank Research also warned that any attempt to trim government spending to maintain the fiscal numbers will be severely detrimental to growth. Lose-monetary policy alone cannot arrest the deepening slump, instead government must take demand-boosting measures, especially in rural areas, by frontloading expenditure primarily through the national rural employment scheme, says a report. Economists at State Bank Research Monday also warned that any attempt to trim government spending to...