Gujarat Narmada Valley Fertilizers & Chemicals Ltd (GNFC) reported a significant decline in profitability margins during the latest December 2023 quarter due to industry-wide disruption stemming from a change in government policy. The company’s operating margins crashed to 6-7% in the first 9 months of financial year 2023-24, down from 18% in the same period […]
India’s fertilizer industry is bracing for a potential squeeze on profitability in the coming months due to a combination of rising input costs and reductions in government subsidies based on declining international prices. According to industry analysts, prices of key inputs like ammonia, phosphoric acid, potassium and sulfur have rebounded strongly over the past two […]
PM Kisan, one of the world’s largest welfare schemes with a targeted beneficiary strength of 140 million, seems to be running well behind schedule, going by data on the disbursement of funds. The scheme was started on Dec 1 2018, and has so far enrolled only around 7 cr (70 million) farmers against the target […]
The size of apartments on sale in India are shrinking like never before, mostly due to a new affordable housing subsidy scheme announced by the government in early 2017. Under this credit subvention scheme, the government will today pay up to Rs 3.5 lakhs to banks on behalf of anyone who takes a home loan […]
Responding to widespread confusion, the Congress Party offered further details about Rahul Gandhi’s new Rs 12,000 minimum income guarantee scheme. UPDATE: The Congress on Tuesday changed the scheme announced on Monday, and removed any reference to Rs 12,000. It clarified that the scheme will only apply to the bottom 20%, and their income levels will […]
The government’s ‘free LPG connection’ scheme, Ujjwala scheme has crossed the 7 crore-target, making it one of the most successful programs of the current government. The scheme launched on May 1, 2016 with a target of providing LPG connections to 5 crore low-income households, and achieved the target in a record of time of 28 […]
The government of India today approved a scheme to give incentives to companies that want to manufacture batteries in India. Briefing media after a cabinet meeting, IT minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said: “We have taken a big step to give incentives under the Make in India program to encourage the manufacturing of batteries.” The move […]
Going by indications from the Unique ID Authority of India, Aadhaar numbers could soon be linked to people’s images, allowing the government and corporations to identify people from their photographs and videos. “UIDAI introduces yet another landmark technology for authentication – Face Authentication,” tweeted @ceo_uidai, the official handle of the CEO of UID Authority of […]
Private players such as Reliance Industries and Essar — owned by Russia’s Rosneft — have tripled the number of petrol and diesel outlets in India in the last two years, and could double their market share by implementing their ongoing expansion plans, India Ratings said. From practically nothing in 2014, private players including Shell and […]
Central Government will give up to Rs 2.5 lakh as interest subsidy for people who take home loans to purchase their house under the Pradhan Manthri Awas Yojana, said Minister of Housing & Urban Affairs Hardeep Singh Puri. He also revealed plans to hand over government land to private builders as part of the scheme. […]
Oil minister Dharmendra Pradhan today said that the current spike in petrol and diesel price is ‘temporary’ and related to the impact of Hurricane Harvey in the US. “The prices have gone up because some of the refining capacity has been shut down (in the US). It is temporary,” Pradhan said today, in response to […]
Even as India more or less sticks to the target on adding large solar farms under its ambitious Solar Mission project, the other leg of the plan — rooftop solar — remains woefully behind target. Under the solar mission, India is supposed to have put in 5,000 megawatt of solar plants on the roofs of […]
Neem coating of urea, one of the key anti-diversion measures introduced by the Narendra Modi government to check the misuse of fertilizer urea by industries, seems to be paying off. According to the latest numbers, the Indian taxpayer saved about Rs 8,000 cr thanks to the move in the form of lower urea subsidy bill […]
The finance ministry has conducted an examination of the existing welfare and subsidy schemes of the central governments and identified 532 of them as being suitable to be migrated to the ‘direct benefit transfer’ or DBT model of disbursing of funds. Under the DBT scheme, the scheme benefit is converted into an equivalent monetary value, which […]
The total number of Aadhaar cards issued by the Unique Identification Authority of India has reached 112.25 cr or 1.122 bln as of the beginning of this month, but enrollments in the border state of Assam trail at 6.5%, according to numbers provided by the UIDAI. The total number suggests that about 86% of India’s estimated […]
The government’s ‘free LPG connection’ scheme, Ujjwala, has seen 60% higher demand than expected, and the objectives of the three-year scheme will be met within two years at the current pace of rollout.As of the end of February, the total number of beneficiaries under the scheme rose to 2 cr (20 mln) from 15 mln […]
States ruled by the National Democratic Alliance have taken the lead in implementing digital ration shops with the introduction of electronic point of sale machines, while non-NDA states have lagged behind in introducing this crucial anti-pilferage measure, data obtained from the food and consumer affairs ministry showed. Out of the seven states that have introduced the system, five […]
The Indian government has no immediate plans or proposals to institute a scheme of ‘unversal basic income’ in place of the myriad social welfare scheme run by the country at present, the finance ministry said in response to a query. The clarification that there is ‘no proposal for a universal basic income scheme’ comes in […]
The spraying of urea, the most widely consumed fertilizer in India, with Neem oil is helping to increase the output of crops by about 10% on average, according to statistics produced by the food and agricultural ministry. The ministry found a 5.8% increase in paddy yield after the use of sprayed urea and increase of […]
