fiscal stimulus

With just three months left for the Union Budget 2010-11, the Ministry of Finance has started the process of pre-Budget consultations. A first round of pre-Budget meetings with the various ministries has already taken place.The ministry has also written to industry bodies to send in their proposals for the Budget. It will hold discussions with the industry beginning next month. Full Article

The Finance Minister announced a slew of amendments on both income-tax and service tax fronts to achieve the objective of “generating economic activity in the present environment of economic slowdown.” The Lok Sabha later passed the Finance Bill (No 2) 2009, completing the third and final stage of the Budget exercise for 2009-10. Full Article

The Union finance ministry is considering an increase in the central excise duty for some of the products that had benefited from the two rounds of reductions announced by the government as part of its fiscal stimulus measures last year. In December 2008, the government had reduced the general rate of central excise duty for [...] Full Article

The three major ad valorem rates of Central Excise duty viz. 14%, 12% and 8% applicable to non-petroleum products have been reduced by 4 percentage points each. The revised rates will be 10%, 8% and 4% respectively. Full Article

Government has focussed its attention on countering the impact of the global recession on India's economic growth. On the monetary side, the RBI has sought to pump sufficient liquidity into the banking system to enable bank credit to meet the expanded requirements of the economy keeping in mind the contraction in credit from non-bank sources. Banks have been provided adequate liquidity through a series of reductions in the CRR and additional flexibility in meeting the SL.. Full Article