The finance minister claims to have reduced the number of rates of excise and customs duties. A closer look at the Budget does not bear out this claim. Neither in terms of reducing the number of...
Budget
Most of the direct tax changes made in the Budget have been widely debated. However, the least discussed yet crucial issue from a tax policy perspective is the growing incoherence in tax policy...
A whole phoney macroeconomics is being propagated these days from the Bretton Woods institutions, which unfortunately, even in this country with its remarkable tradition of economics, has been...
In a bid to contain the fiscal deficit, the government has in this budget targeted outlay on subsidies. This note focuses on the likely consequences in the case of the food subsidy.
The fiscal effects of economic reform have put the government in a state of paralysis with respect to triggering growth and reducing poverty, even though the current circumstances offer an...
The overall approach of the budget in regard to agriculture and rural development, of containing subsidies and increasing investment, is right. But real rationalisation of subsidies requires not...
Government, it appears, does not wish to disturb the ownership pattern of the public sector banks. In that event it has to show the political will to build upon the foundations of the existing public...
There are no major initiatives in the Budget to arrest the disturbing trends in agriculture, rural development and poverty. In the case of the public distribution system (PDS), the government is...
Evidence from literature and data on inter-state differences show that FDI inflows and investment by domestic firms depend on a common set of variables. To drastically increase the investment rates,...
A budget is a complex policy statement and, therefore, needs a framework to be evaluated. The approach taken in this paper is broadly twofold. First, I have evaluated the tax and expenditure...
According to Economic Survey 1999-2000, "The inadequacy of exclusive reliance on broad money growth is also reflected in the coexistence of high monetary growth and low inflation" (p 49). We proffer...
The claim of a major step forward in bringing in a single rate of VAT and simplification of classification and valuation cannot be substantiated. Actually some fresh rigidities and distortions have...
The clearest signal coming from the budget is that political stability is irrelevant when it comes to the pace of economic reforms in India. Why, otherwise, does the budget have the appearance of the...
This is an interventionist, distortionist budget, with little bite. The revenue effort is small and the major expenditure proposals look unrealistic. There is something for all, yet little that is...
Little Revenue, Little Reform I S Gulati THE tax measures announced in the 1980-81 Budget have to be assessed on their own merits for more than one reason. Firstly, if in the Finance Minister's,...
