Even as the growth rate of the Indian economy is slowing down, and the index of industrial production actually showing negative growth for three consecutive months, August to October (over the corresponding months a year ago), the inflation rate in…
In the latest of many critical interventions since he demitted office as Chief Economic Advisor to the Government of India, Arvind Subramanian (in collaboration with Josh Felman, together hereafter referred to AS-JF) has argued that the recent sharp deceleration in…
When income growth slows down in an economy, so does the growth of tax revenue within the given tax regime. Since the government has certain expenditure obligations, to meet these obligations it has to either impose additional taxes or expand…
It is now widely recognised that the Finance Minister misinformed Parliament when presenting the Revised Estimates for central government revenues and expenditures in the Union Budget presented in July 2019. That fact has, however, been largely forgotten, perhaps because to…
The Moody’s decision, citing a growth slowdown and policy inadequacy, to downgrade India by changing its credit rating outlook to ‘negative’ from ‘stable’, and doing the same for a bunch of financial institutions and firms in the power and infrastructure…
The experience of depositors in the Punjab and Maharashtra Cooperative Bank (PMCB) suggests that the government and the central bank are unwilling to protect the financial savings of ordinary households. Besides allowing depositors in the bank to access only a…
A common refrain in assessments of India’s current economic predicament is that the economy is performing below potential because of a lack of ‘liquidity’. Often, this is merely a means of stating that an inadequacy of credit flow is choking…
In an unusual and ill-advised move, the Reserve Bank of India issued a brief ‘clarification’ on October 1st which said: “There are rumours in some locations about certain banks including cooperative banks, resulting in anxiety among the depositors. RBI would…
Mid-September saw some unusual developments in US money markets, which gave market players and monetary authorities the jitters. Over three days, a key short term interest rate rose sharpy to reach levels last touched about a decade ago, when the…
The Indian government should now be desperate to raise more tax revenues. It missed its tax targets massively in the last fiscal year, largely because of poor goods and services tax (GST) collections. Its declared budgetary target for the current…
