Once again it is time for me to react to the Indian Union Budget, and given all the pre-budget media hype around it on television news of a possible tax relief for the middle-class, I should have expected what we finally got to hear on February 1, 2025. I knew it would once again be… Continue reading Desperately Seeking Growth Budget
For the past few years since the Covid-19 pandemic, economic growth around the world has been subject to many constraints, including geopolitical ones, but most of all to cyclical and structural factors as well as to base effects. And every year of economic recovery since the pandemic, we have been speaking of it being the… Continue reading Navigating 2025 the Slowdown Year
We’re into the last quarter of 2024, the year of anticipated slowdown in the global economy. While we’re still awaiting the September quarter GDP growth figures for major economies around the world, it might be safe to say that the worst has been averted. That there isn’t a recession waiting around the corner. A few… Continue reading Reading the Slo-Mo Global Economy
The world’s largest democracy has just concluded its parliamentary elections over a month and a half in seven phases and if you thought most people would have tired of all the election mania including the non-stop reporting on media, you would be mistaken. I was tired of listening to interviews with politicians, I must admit.… Continue reading Implications of India’s Election Verdict on the Economy
The last time I wrote about the global economy, I wrote about its fractious state, thanks to the geopolitical tensions all around. This time, I thought I would look at it from the multilateral institutions’ point of view and then share my own thoughts on where the global economy might be headed. As I write… Continue reading Global Economy Still Searching for Direction
Since the world’s major economies reopened after Covid-related lockdowns, they have been heating up, what with pent-up demand, consumers on a spending spree, travelling, dining out and catching up on a host of social activities that were not possible during lockdowns. All that heated spending and pent-up demand, with supply chains not catching up, led… Continue reading Inflation: Up, up and away!
After reading news of India’s first quarter GDP for FY 23, which showed little sign of a base effect despite the fact that in FY 22, we had grown 20.1% in the same quarter, we are likely to think that base effects don’t matter anymore. It would be unwise to think so, however, because this… Continue reading Pay Attention to the Cyclical Economy
In my last blog post on India, I had written about the three Es that we will have to watch out for in 2022. This article is on the first E: elections, with those on the economy and on engineering economic reforms following in subsequent months. The Omicron variant has set off the third wave… Continue reading Elections in the Midst of a Pandemic
Peripatetic Perch 