The rise in COVID-19 daily new cases and daily new deaths compelled many state governments to impose local level lockdowns during April-May 2021. As of 20th April, 2021, partial lockdowns were noticed in 10 states across the country and complete lockdown was imposed in Delhi. As of 8th May, 2021, nearly the entire country was under complete lockdown as a result of either partial lockdowns and night curfews or complete...
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Govt’s April Fool’s joke on Small Savings Schemes would have hurt the economy -Vivek Kaul
-Livemint.com * Trying to project lower interest rates as a panacea for everything isn’t the right way to go about it. The central government just played an April Fool’s joke on a large section of India’s middle class, which invests in Small Savings Schemes. Late Wednesday evening, the government announced a substantial cut in interest rates on Small Savings Schemes for the three months to June. The interest rates on Senior Citizen Savings Scheme...
More »Government withdraws order on rate cut on Small Savings Schemes -Vikas Dhoot
-The Hindu This is the first time that the Centre has scrapped the notified interest rates on Small Savings Schemes after switching to a quarterly interest rate setting system in April 2016. Hours after notifying significant cuts in small savings instruments’ returns for this quarter, the government has backtracked on these sharp cuts. This is the first time that the Centre has scrapped the notified interest rates on Small Savings Schemes after...
More »Fiscal transparency jacks up ‘expenditure’ numbers in the Union Budget 2021-22
In order to understand why the Union Budget 2021-22 is being termed as ‘transparent’, it has to be read simultaneously with the 15th Finance Commission Main Report for 2021-26. But first, let us discuss 'fertilizer subsidy'. The budget documents for Union Budget 2021-22 show that the spending on ‘fertilizer subsidy’ was slashed from Rs. 1,33,947 crore in 2020-21 (revised estimate) to Rs. 79,530 crore in 2021-22 (budget estimate). However, the budgetary...
More »A fiscal crisis: Why FCI needs provisioning in food subsidy budget -Sandip Das
-Down to Earth Mounting expenses, under-provisioning of food subsidy budget leading to a huge debt is highly worrisome A fiscal crisis has been brewing in the last few years. Mounting food subsidy arrears — payable to the Food Corporation of India (FCI) due to ‘under-provisioning’ of food subsidy expenses in successive union budgets — has forced FCI to take loans to finance its operations. FCI is the central agency that manages procurement, storage...
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