- Tuesday, February 25, 2025
By: Shubham Ghosh
HERE are news in brief on Indian economy and business for Thursday, February 29, 2024:
India has made significant strides in the semiconductor sector in the last two years during which the government received investment proposals of Rs 2.50 lakh crore from global chip makers, the country’s minister of state for electronics Rajeev Chandrasekhar has said. In the last 10 years, India has moved out of the league of ‘Fragile Five’ and become the world’s fifth largest economy, he said. Speaking at the ‘Viksit Bharat Ambassador Meet’ organised in Pune in the western state of Maharashtra on Wednesday, Chandrasekhar said India has become a source of inspiration for countries across the world in terms of its inclusive policies. “India is fast becoming a semiconductor nation. Just two years ago, it was not even present in the semiconductor ecosystem of the world,” the minister stated.
India’s gross domestic product (GDP) grew at a massive 8.4 per cent during the October-December quarter of the current financial year 2023-24 and the country continued to remain the fastest-growing major economy. The Indian economy grew 7.8 per cent and 7.6 per cent during the preceding two quarters – April-June and July-September, data released by the ministry of statistics and programme Implementation on Thursday showed. Real GDP or GDP at Constant (2011-12) Prices in the year 2023-24 is estimated to attain a level of Rs 172.90 lakh crore (£1.6 trillion), against the FRE (first revised estimates)of GDP for the year 2022-23 of Rs 160.71 lakh crore (£1.5 trillion). The growth rate of GDP during 2023-24 has been estimated at 7.6 per cent as compared to growth rate of seven per cent in 2022-23.
Indian finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Thursday virtually inaugurated the Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) facility at Land Customs Stations of North-Eastern Regions for enhancing ease of doing business and facilitating regional trade from New Delhi. She also presided over the handing over ceremony of Customs-seized antiquities to the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI). According to an official release, a total of 101 antiquity items were handed over to the ASI at seven locations across the country — Bengaluru, Bhopal, Bhubaneshwar, Delhi, Guwahati, Mumbai and Pune. The items were handed over during a ceremony conducted by the Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs in the presence of Sitharaman.
IIT Hyderabad-backed WiSig Networks in collaboration with Intel’s Programmable Solutions Group has unveiled an open telecom network gear for 5G services to improve signal strength on mobile phones even for subscribers who are at the edge of network range, the start-up said on Thursday. WiSig Networks said it spearheaded the development of the solution on chipset from Intel’s Programmable Solutions Group (PSG) which it claims to deliver a 10 times improvement in uplink cell edge coverage. “Benefits include Increased capacity, improved signal quality, better spectral efficiency and cost-effective solutions for telecom operators,” the company said in a statement.
Leading global philanthropist Bill Gates, co-founder of Microsoft and co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation was on Thursday honoured with the KISS (Kalinga Institute of Social Sciences) Humanitarian Award 2023 in a significant recognition of his philanthropic work. The ceremony took place on February 28, 2024, in Bhubaneswar, capital of the eastern state of Odisha, acknowledging Gates for his unparalleled contributions to enhancing global health, and education, and addressing climate change through innovative technology solutions aimed at reducing inequality. During the event, Gates engaged in a meaningful conversation on gender equality, prompted by a question from a KISS alumni.
In the last 10 years, prime minister Narendra Modi has laid the foundation for good governance and development, and India has emerged from the fragile five economies of the world to now become a top five economy, India’s information and broadcasting minister Anurag Thakur said. “Six hundred million people are getting facility of the Ayushman Bharat Scheme, 800 million people are getting free food grain for five years and across the world we are paying the highest MSP (minimum support price) for sugarcane. In the last 10 years, we have worked on laying the foundation of good governance and development. In the next 24 years we will become Viksit Bharat. I believe that we will achieve the goal of Viksit Bharat much before 2047,” he said..
(Agencies)
