Economics Demystified

Disinvestment can only be a short-term measure in plugging the widening fiscal gap Privatisation is now rising high on Modi government’s economic agenda as it plans to sell its stake in blue chip companies like BPCL and multimodal logistics giant CONCOR. Recently, Central government kicked off its disinvestment plan by giving in-principle approval for strategic disinvestment in five public sector enterprises- Bharat Petroleum Corporation Ltd (BPCL); Shipping Corporation of India; Container Corporation of India (Concor); Tehri Hydro Power Development Corporation (THDCIL), and North Eastern Electric Power Corporation Ltd (NEEPCO), along with its management control. Further, government is also eyeing on complete sell-off of its national carrier, Air India. Under its future disinvestment proposal, the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs (CCEA) has given clearance to the reduction of government’s stake in select public sector units to 51 percent, “while retaining management control on c...

Scrapping of Consumer Expenditure Survey Consumer Expenditure Survey(CES) conducted by NSO, Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation(MOSPI) is one of the oldest and reliable surveys conducted at quinquennial intervals for estimating household Monthly Per Capita Consumer Expenditure (MPCE). The CES is not only source of information on consumption spending and inequality, but also used extensively in other statistical processes including revision of base years for GDP estimation and deciding weight of various items in the CPI basket. The Ministry is making headlines again; this time, over National Statistical Office’s (NSO’s) decision of scrapping 75 th round ( July2017- June2018) of consumer expenditure survey over “data quality” issues. A leaked finding from the survey report stated that average amount spent by an Indian in a month fell 3.7% to Rs 1,446 in 2017-18 from Rs. 1,501 in 2011-12; while consumer spending declined 8.8% in 2017-18 in India’s villages. Th...