But the bounce is unlikely to signal a quick turnaround in the Indian economy, which contracted at its steepest pace on record of 23.9% annually last quarter. It was expected to remain in recession this year, a Reuters poll showed on Friday.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi and President Donald Trump have a strong personal bond and a strong commitment to do a trade deal, "so there's a chance", Deputy Secretary of State Stephen Biegun said at the third India-US Leadership Summit organised virtually by the US India Strategic and Partnership Forum (USISPF) on Monday.
Plenty of places have been pummeled by the pandemic, but few have notched a descent as steep as India has. And unlike Malaysia, Singapore or China, the shutdown in India didn’t even help curtail the spread of the virus. The consequence of it all is that India incurred a dreadful cost for little reward.
Consumer spending, private investments and exports all collapsed during the world's strictest lockdown imposed in late March to combat the COVID-19 pandemic and India - the world's fastest-growing large economy until a few years ago - now looks to be headed for its first full-year contraction since 1980.
"Integration of eNAM and Kisan Rath with FPOs and warehouses will enable farmers to sell and transport their produce anywhere in the country where they get better prices," say officials in the Ministry.
According to Dun & Bradstreet's Economy Forecast, demand will only materialise once the economic activity gathers momentum. "While an increase in the e-commerce activity indicates some tentative revival in pent-up demand, the expected decline in investment activity can be a drag on growth," said Arun Singh, Global Chief Economist, Dun & Bradstreet.
The Centre and opposition-ruled states like Punjab, Kerala, Delhi and West Bengal, are at loggerheads over the financing of the Rs 2.35 lakh crore Goods and Services Tax (GST) shortfall in the current fiscal. Of this, about Rs 97,000 crore is on account of GST implementation and rest Rs 1.38 lakh crore is the impact of COVID on states' revenues.
State finance minister Manpreet Badal has written to Union finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman communicating the decision while seeking clarity on several concerns raised by the state. “We thus take both the options with great regret as a clear breach of solemn and constitutional assurance by the Central government,” Badal said in his letters sent out on Monday. ET has seen a copy.
"Year-on-year inflation based on all-items stood at 5.33 per cent for July 2020 as compared to 5.06 per cent for the previous month (June 2020) and 5.98 per cent during the corresponding month (July 2019) of the previous year," a labour ministry statement said.
The eight industries are coal, crude oil, natural gas, refinery products, fertiliser, steel, cement and electricity. These together have a 40 per cent weight in the Index of Industrial Production (IIP).
GDP forecasts for the June quarter range from contraction of 15 to 25.9 per cent, which is the worst performance since the country started reporting quarterly data in 1996, according to Bloomberg.
Indore-based Indison Agro Foods Ltd, which is facing insolvency resolution, has argued in its case that the law requires the bench to consist of two members, with both judicial and technical competence, to hear cases related to the Insolvency & Bankruptcy Code (IBC).
The antimonopoly regulator CCI has so far expeditiously reviewed and clear 15 insolvency-related transactions and the draft amendment bill proposes further reducing the timeline for prima facie review from 30 working days to 20 calendar days which will also apply to IBC cases and further help the expedite such destress deals, says Vaibhav Choukse - Partner, Competition Practice at JSA.
Top government officials told TOI that the compensation mechanism and calculations of what it should be has been “hard wired” into the law and the proposals put before the states were based on two rounds of consultation with attorney general K K Venugopal.
“The Centre has to compensate states for the GST shortfall as laid down in the laws. It cannot transfer its responsibility to the states,” M Veerappa Moily said.
"I do not agree that we are likely to face a situation of stagflation," Das told the newspaper in an interview published on Monday. "I am of the view that consumer inflation, going forward, should moderate."
Economists in a Reuters poll predicted that gross domestic product in world's fifth-largest economy will contract by 18.3% in the June quarter, compared to 3.1% growth in the previous quarter, the worst performance in at least eight years.
The government is also deliberating forming producers’ companies for all the clusters and link all the clusters and artisans with them.
"Under the PFRDA Act, we have the mandate to launch a minimum assured return scheme. Under pension fund (PF) schemes, the funds that are managed are mark-to-market. So obviously there is some volatility and the valuation is according to the market movement.
The Revamped Gold Deposit Scheme, which was formulated to mobilise and productively use idle gold held by households and institutions (estimated to be over 24,000 tonnes), has not yielded the desired results, garnering deposits of only around 20 tonnes of gold, the council said.
Non-BJP ruled states like Punjab, Kerala, Delhi and West Bengal are at loggerheads with the Centre over the financing of the Rs 2.35 lakh crore Goods and Services Tax (GST) shortfall in the current fiscal.
Revenue from income taxes (personal income tax and corporate income taxes) was lower by 30.5 per cent, and the GST by almost 34 per cent during the period.
The issue was discussed during the 17th ASEAN-India Economic Ministers Consultations meet held virtually on August 29, an official statement said on Sunday.
The meeting will focus on ways to enable businesses and households to avail the one-time loan restructuring scheme.
In his monthly 'Mann Ki Baat' broadcast, the prime minister also said people have shown an unprecedented restraint and simplicity in their festivals during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Centre on Saturday circulated two options for states to borrow and meet the GST shortfall, which will be repaid via an extension of the compensation cess beyond the June 2022 deadline.
The year-on-year growth of the Indian Railways’ freight business entered positive territory in mid-August for the first time since March 25, when a nationwide lockdown was announced by the government to curb the spread of the novel coronavirus. With that, the economy, too, came to a standstill for at least two months.
When asked about which borrowing option Assam may adopt, Sarma said, “We are now deliberating...what we want is authorisation to take loan. How much loan we want- that freedom must be with the state government. We don’t want Centre to borrow for us and offloaded to us.”
GSTR-2B will be generated on GST portal for every registered person on the basis of the information furnished by his suppliers and will be made available for each month, on the 12th day of the succeeding month, GSTN said in a statement.
In the second option, state borrowing will be for the full Rs 2.35 lakh crore – shortfall owing to GST implementation (Rs 97,000 crore) and impact of Covid 19 pandemic induced economic slowdown – which will be provided through market borrowing.
According to the joint statement, the ministers recognised the importance of facilitating essential movement of people across borders, without undermining each country's efforts to prevent the spread of the virus, to stabilise the trade and investment.
The marketplace allows the farmers to bypass intermediaries, optimising the supply chain and ensuring traceability to create value for all stakeholders, officials said.
With an aim to address the talent shortage and promote transparency in board-level appointments of central public sector enterprises (CPSEs), the PESB chairman has suggested numerous measures including creating wider talent pool, allowing lateral entry for candidates and offering level-playing field.
"Affordable Rental Housing Complex" is included in the Harmonized Master List of Infrastructure Sub-sectors by insertion of a new item in the category of "Social and Commercial Infrastructure", the notification read.
Tourism Finance Corporation of India MD and CEO Anirban Chakraborty said hotels and the hospitality sector are under the MSME segment in the loan restructuring framework of RBI.
The official rainfall season in the country is from June 1 to September 30. June received 17-per cent more rainfall while July recorded 10-per cent less rainfall than normal.
A defining feature of the current economic crisis is the unprecedented fiscal and monetary stimulus packages being rolled out by the governments to provide relief and revive the economy. In India too, the focus is on the existing ‘brown economy’ and shovel-ready projects.
As on Friday, the total acreage was reported at 1,082 lakh hectares against 1,010 lakh hectares during the corresponding period last year – an increase by over 7%. Sown areas of mainly paddy, oilseeds and pulses contributed to this increase.
The Public Enterprises Selection Board (PESB) has proposed to hold interviews for all jobs of chairman and managing directors of a group of PSUs or directors for human resources and finance at the start of the year, instead of looking for candidates for individual companies.
Members can use this facility to withdraw three months' basic wages -- basic pay plus dearness allowance -- or half of the total accumulation in his or her Employees' Provident Fund (EPF) account, whichever is less for meeting exigencies due to the COVID-19 situation.
The central bank has been regularly conducting the Consumer Confidence Survey (CCS) and the Inflation Expectations Survey of Households (IESH).
With an average monthly wage of Rs 32,800 (USD 437), India has been ranked a lowly 72nd among 106 countries surveyed by Picodi.com, an international e-commerce platform which provides discount coupons.
Kant also emphasised that Prime Minister Narendra Modi's vision of ease of living for the citizens of India will be the government's focus. His comments come a day after the World Bank announced the decision to pause publication of its global 'Doing Business Report' due to irregularities in reporting of data based on which countries were ranked with regard to their business climate.
While the industrial and services sectors are still struggling to recover from the adverse impact of COVID-19, the agriculture sector could become an engine for economic recovery, India Ratings and Research said in a report.
Planting in the current kharif season has surpassed the previous best of 107 million hectares achieved in 2016-17. With sowing still on, the area will further go up.
Addressing a webinar organised by industry body PHDCCI, he assured the industry that the ministry would examine its various demands.
Further, assets under management (AUM) of the National Pension Scheme (NPS) are set to touch Rs 5 lakh crore by September-end, Bhandopadhyay said, with the figure growing at 16.5% so far during the current fiscal.
Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana and Kerala have together raised over 1.2 lakh crore, and along with Maharashtra, Rajasthan, West Bengal, Gujarat, and Haryana have emerged as the largest borrowers so far, accounting for 83% of the total state government borrowings of 2.7 lakh crore.
The lack of field surveys add to the data complexities, with output in several sectors likely to be estimated and later revised once the hard numbers become available in coming months. Measuring last quarter’s GDP has been the "most challenging exercise in a long time," Sumedha Das Gupta, an economist at ICICI Bank Ltd, says.
While the legal opinion made it clear that the Centre did not have to bear the compensation burden, states pointed to the assurance given by former FM Arun Jaitley and provisions in the Constitution to make their claim and were pressing that the Centre should borrow from the market.
