'“Every single number in the Budget is a lie,” Jayati Ghosh, Professor of Economics at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), said on here Sunday of the Union Budget. India’s current slowdown is worse than that of 1991 and 2008, and the Budget has cut allocations to all employment-intensive sectors, further adding to the mess, said Ms. Ghosh, one of the world’s leading development economists. “All the most employment-intensive sectors like agriculture, employment guarantee, food, health, education, there are cuts.”...'
'Global funds have turned net sellers of India’s sovereign bonds for the first time in four months, as expectations grow of a wider budget deficit. Foreign investors sold Rs 11,000 crore ($1.5 billion) of government bonds so far in January, set for its first sell-off in four months, according to data from Clearing Corp. of India, compiled by Bloomberg. An increasing number of analysts predict that Prime Minister Narendra Modi will again announce a record borrowing plan at the 1 February budget.
'The bad run for the Indian economy continues with the latest victim being the government's direct tax kitty, where collections have now entered the negative zone for the very first time. Government sources said that direct tax collection in the current fiscal up to 15 January has fallen by 6.1% compared with the corresponding period of previous year. While the development would test the government's ability to manage its finances and contain the deficit, it has the potential to virtually seal the fate of any big tax cut announcement in the coming Union Budget...'
'The economic slowdown in India was the primary reason behind global growth estimates being downgraded in the latest World Economic Outlook, said International Monetary Fund's Chief Economist Gita Gopinath. In its World Economic Outlook (WEO) released on Monday, International Monetary Fund (IMF) slashed global growth projections for 2019 to 2.9 per cent and for 2020 to 3.3 per cent. India's growth forecast was also downgraded for 2019 to 4.8 per cent from 6.1 per cent on the back of sharp decline in consumer demand, stress in the NBFC sector and sluggish credit growth...'
'India’s GDP is expected to grow at just 5% in FY’20, according to the ‘first advance estimates’ released by the Central Statistics Office (CSO) on Tuesday evening. The newest growth projection is the latest acknowledgement that Indian economic activity has cooled this fiscal year on the back of reduced private investment and depressed consumer spending...'
'India’s economy grew at its slowest pace in six years for the second quarter of this fiscal year, according to official data released by the government on Friday evening. Gross domestic product (GDP) growth rose just 4.5% for the quarter ended September 2019, in a development that reinforces concerns that the Indian economy is slowing down and unlikely to record 6% growth for the whole fiscal year. In ‘gross value added’ (GVA) terms, the economy grew at 4.3% compared to 4.9% in the previous quarter.
'Demonetisation and the Goods and Services Tax (GST) are the two major headwinds that held back India’s economic growth last year, former RBI governor Raghuram Rajan has said, asserting that the current 7% growth rate is not enough to meet the country’s needs. Addressing an audience at the University of California in Berkley on Friday, Rajan said for four years – 2012 to 2016 – India was growing at a faster pace before it was hit by two major headwinds... “What happened in 2017 is that even as the world picked up, India went down.
