Before Twitter announced massive (~ 50%) layoffs after Elon Musk’s acquisition, financial services company Stripe announced a 14% layoff. Transport company Lyft followed with a 13% layoff, and on 9th November 2022, Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, announced that it would cut 13% of its workforce. Earlier, Amazon announced that it would freeze…

A reader wanted a simple explanation for why the INR (Indian Rupee) fluctuates in value with respect to the USD (US Dollar). A discussion. It may seem strange but just like there is an equity market, bond market, commodities market (gold, silver, oil, cotton, etc.), money market, there is also a forex market. That is,…

RBI Repo rate history from June 2000 to the present is presented in the table below. The repo rate is the rate at which RBI lends money to banks. It is an inflation and liquidity control measure.  A simple explanation with an example is available here: Understanding Repo Rate and Reverse Repo rate. Since the…

I am sure that at some point while watching the news on TV or skimming through news articles, you might have come across headlines like these and wondered what they meant: “RBI raises repo rate, reverse repo rate by 25 bps”,  “RBI cuts repo rate by 25 basis points” With the RBI’s rate-setting panel (the…

Every time the RBI lowers interest rates, we see many investors complain. In this article, Harshini explains why a high-interest rate is not healthy for our finances by taking Turkey’s example, where interest rates were recently increased to 17%! Older readers may recall when EPF and PPF rates were as high as 12% in the…

The Government launched an LTC (Leave Travel Concession) Cash Voucher Scheme for Central Government employees on 12th October 2020 to enable employees to purchase goods and services instead of availing LTC & leave encashment. This is a reimbursement scheme for LTC expense to revive the economy. Details and FAQ about the scheme are presented. About…

The consolidated monthly Account of the Union Government of India up to the month of June 2019 for the Financial Year 2019-20 was recently released. The total spending is Rs. 8,15,944 crore. This is 431% more than its total revenue!

India’s “debt to GDP ratio” increased by 3.5% from March 2019 to March 2020. In this article,  we discuss concerns over how the lockdown could push govt debt higher and enumerate the status of govt borrowing pre-lockdown listed in the Ninth Edition of the Status Paper on Government Debt.

Here is how the lockdown has impacted sixteen entrepreneurs and business owners from various walks of life

The consolidated monthly Account of the Union Government of India up to the month of October 2019 for the Financial Year 2019-20 was recently released. The total spending is Rs. 16,54,905 crores,  a good 77% more than its total revenue! What are the different heads of income and expenditure for the government? An explanation.