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Tag Search: “public finance”

15th Finance Commission: Covid-19 warrants rethink of local government allocations

The 15th Finance Commission has made significant departures from the previous Central Finance Commissions in its recommendations for urban local governments, in its interim report for 2020-21. In this...

  • Perspectives

Financing of fiscal response to Covid-19: A red herring?

Governments around the world are frenetically announcing an expanding slew of rapid response measures to address the fallouts of Covid-19 pandemic. The fiscal price tag on these measures is massive an...

  • Perspectives

Rural infrastructure development and economic activity

Estimating the effects of physical infrastructure investments on economic growth has remained challenging, especially in rural settings. This article studies the effects of a rural infrastructure gran...

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Infrastructure development: Current bottlenecks and way forward

Infrastructure development remains a key constraint in India’s economic development. Given the budgetary constraints of the government, private financing for infrastructure provisioning through public...

  • Perspectives

Economic Survey 2019-20: How does it seek to address challenges of farm sector?

This year’s Economic Survey, the flagship document of the Ministry of Finance, was recently tabled in the Parliament at a time of economic slowdown and rural distress in India. In this post, Sudha Nar...

  • Perspectives

Tapping the revenue potential of property tax in India

Property tax, levied on ownership of any real property, is a significant source of revenue for city-level municipal governments in India. However, revenue collections from it are quite low as it is po...

  • Perspectives

Foreign currency sovereign bonds: Think before you leap?

Government recently announced its decision to borrow in foreign currency from abroad to finance part of government’s fiscal deficit. In this post, Renu Kohli discusses some key fiscal preconditions re...

  • Perspectives

Would RBI fund transfer weaken government's financial position?

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) recently decided to transfer Rs. 1.76 trillion to the Government of India (GOI). If the RBI has inadequate capital, then it should not transfer funds to the GOI. But ev...

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Public debt through the ages

The history of sovereign debt evolved over time along with the purposes for which governments borrowed: first State-building, then public-good provision, and most recently social welfare and entitleme...

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Challenges in decentralised implementation of centrally mandated anti-poverty programmes

Even when the central government is committed to a jobs guarantee, rationing of work opportunities can arise under decentralised implementation in poor places. This article examines India’s efforts to...

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Why external sovereign debt should be avoided

The Finance Minister of India, in her 2019 Budget speech, announced the government’s intent to finance a part of the fiscal deficit by issuing sovereign bonds in the international financial markets. T...

  • Perspectives

Government securities market: Price discovery and the cost of Indian government borrowing

The government securities (G-Secs) market has substantial effects on other markets as the producer of risk-free interest rate benchmarks. Over 2017-18, there was a sharp rise in the interest rates of ...

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