India will continue to bring down tariffs and phase out additional levies on imports as domestic manufacturing improves, a top finance ministry official said, ahead of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to the US. “We will soon start stakeholder consultations with ministries on whether rates can be lowered further without impacting the industry,” Sanjay Agarwal, … Read more
The Economic Survey 2024-25 highlighted the accelerating adoption of artificial intelligence in India’s services sector, with major strides being made in banking, finance, healthcare, telecom, retail, and transport. The report, prepared by the Chief Economic Advisor to the Finance Ministry, stated that the services sector stands out for its swift embrace of AI, thanks to … Read more
Over the last decade, States have been relying more and more on transfers and grants from the Centre. In the last decade (FY16 to FY25), 23-30% of the total revenue of States was collected from the Centre as transfers. However, in the 2000s and the first half of 2010, the share was 20-24%. Also, close … Read more
The government revised gold and silver imports for April-November FY25, with the steepest downward revision of $5 billion in the former. Data for November gold imports was revised to $9.84 billion, from the $14.86 billion announced last month, narrowing the trade deficit for the month to $32.8 billion, from the record $37.8 billion estimated earlier. … Read more
The government has set up a working group under NITI Aayog member Ramesh Chand for revising the base year of the current series of Wholesale Price Index (WPI) to 2022-23 from 2011-12 currently. The group will suggest the commodity basket of WPI and Producer Price Index (PPI) with base year 2022-23 considering structural changes in … Read more
The combination of monetary policy stance and macroprudential measures by the central bank, and structural factors, may have contributed to slowdown in demand, a finance ministry report said on Thursday in the latest sign of divergent views between North Block and the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) over growth and inflation. This is the first … Read more
India has a demographic window and the government is working towards ensuring that its young cohort is productive and useful to the economy, skills development secretary Atul Kumar Tiwari said, adding that the onus lies on the government, industry and academia to take advantage of the situation. “We have a window during which our working … Read more
Billionaire Prem Watsa said India would be able to achieve the double-digit growth that it needs to transform itself into a developed nation with much of the groundwork having been done. “Ten per cent economic growth gets India ahead… (South) Korea did it for three decades, Japan, China also did it. There are a lot … Read more
India will witness the steepest rise in living standards of the common man on the back of the government’s initiatives and the efforts towards doubling per capita income in few years, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said on Friday. Addressing the 3rd edition of the Kautilya Economic Conclave, the minister stressed that inequality in India has … Read more