Here’s our round-up of all the important economy and political news you may have missed
Economy:
- An RTI query revealed that 18 public sector banks (PSBs) were hit by 2,480 cases involving a sum of Rs 31,898.63 crore
- Demand for entry-level cars fell by more than 56% in the first five months of this fiscal
- The International Monetary Fund (IMF) on Thursday said that India’s economic growth is “much weaker” than expected and gave reasons such as corporate and environmental regulatory uncertainty and lingering weakness in some non-bank financial companies for the same.
- India’s retails inflation reached a 10-month high of 3.21% in August
- According to data released by the Commerce Ministry on Friday, India’s merchandise exports dropped over 6 per cent to $26.13 billion in August from the same month last year due to a drop in shipments of petroleum, gems and jewellery, engineering goods, textile, chemicals and rice
- According to the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) data, bank credit and deposits growth slowed to 10.24 per cent and 9.73 per cent to Rs 96.80 trillion and Rs 127.80 trillion , respectively, in the fortnight to August 30
- In the first 100 days of the Modi government’s second term, investors’ wealth worth Rs. 12.5 lakh crore has been wiped out
- The latest RBI data also revealed that demonetisation was the reason behind the current consumption slowdown which led to economic slowdown.
- While stating that the Indian government has only limited room to ease fiscal policy due to high debt, Fitch Ratings forecasted India’s economic growth at 6.6 per cent during the current year, down from 6.8 per cent in the previous year
Politics:
- Curfew-like restrictions were imposed in several parts of Kashmir, the state which has been under lockdown for over a month now, to foil any plans on taking out Muharram processions in the Valley
- In an interview to BusinessLine, former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said that “it was the blunder of demonetisation, followed by the faulty implementation of GST, that triggered this (economic) slowdown”
- Hitting out at the Modi government on the completion of its 100 days in office, the Congress on Sunday called it a period of “tyranny, chaos and anarchy.” In a series of tweets, the Congress slammed the government on every aspect right from GDP to automobile sector to the economy as a whole
- Senior BJP leader Anantkumar Hegde has accused IAS officer Sasikumar Senthil, who recently resigned citing the same reason, of treachery and suggested that the officer goes to Pakistan
- Minister of State for Home Affairs Nityanand Rai on Tuesday said unemployment figures were incorrect and no one was losing jobs
- Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Tuesday linked the slowdown in the economy with the change in the mindset of the millennials who prefer using cab services such as Ola and Uber instead of buying their own car and paying monthly instalments
- Union Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal on Thursday made an utterly incorrect statement when he said, “Maths didn’t help Einstein discover gravity”
- Karnataka Deputy Chief Minister Govind Karjol recently said that it wasn’t bad roads but good ones that led to accidents. “Every year the state witnesses around 10,000 road accidents. The media said the reason for that was bad roads but I said no, in fact, the reason was good roads,” Karjol told reporters at Holalkere in Chitradurga while responding to a question about people demanding better roads from the government post the increase in traffic violation fines