- Tuesday, March 04, 2025
By: Shubham Ghosh
Here are news in brief related to Indian economy and business for Monday, March 13, 2023:
The Indian government has said it has set a target of achieving defence manufacturing worth Rs 175,000 crore (£17.5 billion), including defence exports of Rs 35,000 crore (£3.5 billion) by 2024-25, PTI reported. Replying to a question in the Rajya Sabha or Upper House of the Indian parliament, minister of state for defence Ajay Bhatt said the value of production undertaken by private companies and state-run defence manufacturers in 2021-22 was Rs 86,078 crore (£8.6 billion) while the amount was Rs 88,631 crore (£8.8 billion) in 2020-21 and Rs 63,722 crore (£6.3 billion) in 2019-20. “The government has set the target of achieving defence manufacturing worth Rs 1,75,000 crore including defence exports of Rs 35,000 crore by the year 2024-25,” Bhatt said.
Retail inflation in India remained above RBI’s 6 per cent upper tolerance band for the second straight month in February 2023, with the Consumer Price Index pegged at 6.44 per cent, government data released on Monday showed, ANI reported. The retail inflation in rural and urban India was 6.72 per cent and 6.1 per cent, respectively. Among groups, cereals and products, and fruits, among others, contributed to the elevation in retail inflation in February. Further, the Consumer Food Price Index in February was 5.95 per cent, data showed. Retail inflation on vegetables, however, declined 11.61 per cent.
India’s ministry of ports has unveiled its plan to develop a berth ‘Berth no 13’ for handling multipurpose clean cargo including container cargo at Deendayal Port in Kandla in the western state of Gujarat, ANI reported. It will be set up on Design, Build, Finance, Operate & Transfer basis under Public Private Partnership mode. The project will be developed for an estimated cost of Rs 167.88 crore (£16.7 million). The proposed facility is planned for handling vessels up to 75,000 DWT or equivalent TEUs with optimal capacity of 4.20 million tonne per annum for multipurpose clean cargo and 0.10 million TEU (Twenty-foot equivalent unit) for container cargo.
India’s income tax (I-T) department has selected 68,000 high-value transaction cases on a pilot basis pertaining to the financial year 2019-2020 for e-verification, ANI reported. Within six months, it has disposed of 35,000 cases, said Central Board of Direct Taxes chairman Nitin Gupta. Gupta said that the I-T department had taken several progressive steps to encourage voluntary tax compliance and facilitate a transparent and non-intrusive tax administration. One such major initiative is the e-Verification Scheme, 2021, which was notified on December 13, 2021. The chairman said that the scheme provided an opportunity for taxpayers to accept the mismatch of information vis-a-vis the original income tax return (ITR) filed and it was found that many taxpayers have filed updated ITRs.
India has asked banks and traders to avoid using Chinese yuan to pay for Russian imports, three informed government officials involved in policy making and two banking sources said, Reuters reported. The decision was taken over long-running political differences with the neighbouring nation. The government officials added that India, which has become a top buyer of Russian oil as well as discounted coal, would prefer the use of UAE dirhams to settle trade. One of the government officials involved in the matter said India is “not comfortable” with foreign trade settled in yuan but said settlement in “dirham is okay”.
