Borrowing from cricket terminology, media is agog with description of Modi – government first full-fledged budget 2015-16 as a ‘super-budget’. There could not be a more apt description. Finance minister Jaitely has delivered wholeheartedly on the hopes and aspiration of 1.25 billion people of India who only 9 months ago had given Team Modi a resounding mandate to govern and extricate them from the deep economic morass they were plunged in to, courtesy a decade of mis-management and policy paralysis. People gave command to Team Modi on five major planks viz., (i) inclusive development; (ii) building infrastructure; (iii) social safety net (iv) poverty alleviation and (v) countenancing the menace of corruption. On all these counts, the team has delivered without...
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Category: Savings & Investment
Empowering poor vide PM Jan Dhan Yojna
In India, tens of thousands of farmers commit suicide every year. An overarching cause in majority of the cases is they are heavily indebted and inability to pay back to money lender forces them to the extreme step as they can’t bear consequential torture and exploitation. The agony is palpating in instances whereby even a small loan taken by farmer or a landless laborer from money lender gets transformed in to mountain of debt as interest charged by latter is exorbitant – 4-5 times higher than what the banks charge. At another level, consider a woman at home who struggles hard to keep her earnings safe even as her die-hard alcoholic husband looks for every possible opportunity to pounce. Eventually,...
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Suzuki bid to trample Maruti Suzuki India
Suzuki Motor Corporation (SMC) parent company of Maruti Suzuki India (MSIL) is going ahead with setting up of a car manufacturing plant in Gujarat with 1.5 million units per annum through its 100% subsidiary, Suzuki Motor Gujarat (SMG). During an investor presentation, SMC informed that SMC/SMG intends to fund the investment of Rs 18,500 crores in the plant with own equity and accumulated depreciation. It will make cars on a strictly no-profit, no-loss basis. SMG will enter in to a contract manufacturing agreement (CMA) with MSIL for an initial period of 15 years for supply of entire production to the latter. The CMA could be extended by mutual consent. In case, it is not extended, the “assets would be transferred...
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FAILING TO LOOK BEYOND THE ‘RED LINE’
The Union Finance Minister’s penchant for window-dressing figures is clearly evident in the interim Budget which he presented to Parliament a few days ago. But nothing he has done changes the fact that the economic scenario is gloomy, writes UTTAM GUPTA In the interim Budget he presented to Parliament on February 17, Union Minister for Finance P Chidambaram has achieved fiscal deficit at 4.6 per cent of GDP during 2013-14 against target of 4.8 per cent. He has set a target of 4.1 per cent for 2014-15 which is even lower than 4.2 per cent as per roadmap laid last year. When viewed in backdrop of a shortfall of around Rs 77,000 crore in in tax collections and Rs 30,000 crore...
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Growth held hostage to bureaucratic red-tape
In a recent address to captains of Indian industry at FICCI, Mr Rahul Gandhi, Vice-President, Congress lambasted the ‘arbitrary’ powers enjoyed by an Environment Minister as major stumbling bloc in granting approvals to projects. In this backdrop, it was not just a coincidence that the Union Minister for Environment & Forest, Ms Jayanti Natarajan submitted her resignation though this was camouflaged as being necessaited by the need to enable her focus on party work. At a time when India is trapped in to a low GDP growth trajectory of less than 5%, projects worth Rs 10 lakh crores (US$ 160 billion) are pending clearance at the level of Minister despite approval already granted by environment appraisal panels. Of projects worth...
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RBI must not see ‘inflation’ through prism of bank credit
Too many accolades are being showered on RBI Governor, Mr Raghuram Rajan for maintaining status quo in regard to repo rate (rate at which RBI lends money to banks) and cash reserve ratio (CRR) (portion of deposits bank keep with RBI). In view of consumer price index (CPI) spurting to over 11% during November, 2013 and even whole sale price index (WPI) increasing to 7.5%, stakeholders were anticipating an increase in repo rate by a minimum of 0.25%. Mr Rajan has surprised them by not increasing thereby sending them in a celebration mode. However, there is no room for complacency as the under-current of RBI policy statement continues to be hawkish. The Governor has made it abundantly clear that inflation...
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