Latest news with #Domestic
Straits Times
4 hours ago
- Business
- Straits Times
China earmarks $16 billion budget for 2025 childcare subsidies
Sign up now: Get ST's newsletters delivered to your inbox Increasing spending on family support reportedly creates a strong system to address China's various economic and social factors that discourage childbirth. HONG KONG - China's finance ministry on July 30 said it had earmarked 90 billion yuan (S$16.14 billion) as an initial budget for childcare subsidy payments in 2025 , an amount that experts said would probably be insufficient to boost a flagging birth rate. China announced a childcare subsidy of 3,600 yuan per year for every child on July 28 , until they reach the age of three. Subsidies will start from the year 2025 , and children born before 2025 who are less than three years old will get partial subsidies. Families can apply for the support from late August, Mr Wang Haidong, director of the Department of Population and Family of the National Health Commission, said at a press conference on July 30 to explain the programme. Chinese provinces have started issuing local childcare subsidies in the last two years, but the amounts are not uniform and range from 1,000 yuan per child to as much as 100,000 yuan including housing subsidies. Mr Guo Yang, director at the Chinese Ministry of Finance, said the central government would subsidise local administrations. 'This demonstrates the central government's high attention and strong support for local governments and will further strengthen local management responsibilities,' he said. Top stories Swipe. Select. Stay informed. Singapore MHA to support HSA's crackdown on Kpod abusers and help in treatment of offenders: Shanmugam Singapore Bukit Panjang LRT to shut on 2 Sundays to facilitate tests; some upgrading work nearing completion Singapore Jail, fine for man linked to case involving 3 bank accounts that received over $680m in total Singapore Provision shop owner who raped 11-year-old gets more than 14 years' jail Business S'pore's economic resilience will face headwinds in second half of 2025 from tariffs, trade conflicts: MAS Business S'pore's Q2 total employment rises but infocomm, professional services see more job cuts Singapore Fewer than 1 in 5 people noticed suspicious items during MHA's social experiments Asia Powerful 8.8-magnitude quake in Russia's far east causes tsunami; Japan, Hawaii order evacuations The high cost of childcare and education, as well as job uncertainty and a slowing economy have discouraged many young Chinese couples from starting a family, at a time when China is already ageing. Roughly 300 million Chinese are expected to enter retirement in the coming decade – the equivalent of almost the entire US population. The authorities rolled out a series of 'fertility-friendly' measures in 2024, including enhanced maternity insurance and leave, to try and boost the birth rate, which hit a record low in 2023. China's current spending on family-friendly policies is estimated to be well below 1 per cent of its Gross Domestic Product (GDP), compared with 2 per cent to 4 per cent in many Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development countries, said Dr Xiujian Peng, senior research fellow in the Centre of Policy Studies at Victoria University. 'If China can increase its spending on family support even to 2 per cent of its GDP – about three trillion yuan annually – it might create a strong system to address various economic and social factors that discourage childbirth,' she said. Promoting family-friendly work environments, including childcare services, breastfeeding rooms and strengthening female workers' rights are also being urged, said Ms Liu Hongmei, director of the All-China Federation of Trade Unions, a state-run body. REUTERS
Indian Express
a day ago
- Business
- Indian Express
IMF upgrades India's FY26 GDP growth forecast to 6.4% as trade tensions ease
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) on Tuesday raised its Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth forecast for India to 6.4 per cent for both 2025-26 and 2026-27 on account of easing global trade tensions, with the world economy also seen expanding at a slightly faster pace than what the multilateral organisation had predicted in April. 'In India, growth is projected to be 6.4 per cent in 2025 and 2026, with both numbers revised slightly upward, reflecting a more benign external environment than assumed in the April reference forecast,' the IMF said in an update to its World Economic Outlook report, referring to India's fiscal years that begin in 2025 and 2026. According to non-partisan policy research center The Budget Lab at Yale, US consumers faced an overall average effective tariff rate of 18.2 per cent as on July 28, down from 28 per cent on April 9. India's GDP is estimated to have increased by 6.5 per cent in 2024-25, the lowest growth rate in four years. The Reserve Bank of India (RBI), meanwhile, expects the GDP to grow by another 6.5 per cent in the current fiscal, with the Indian finance ministry estimating it in the range of 6.3-6.8 per cent. For 2026-27, the RBI on April 9 had forecast a growth rate of 6.7 per cent. Back in April, the IMF had cut its growth forecasts for India by 30 basis points (bps) to 6.2 per cent for 2025-26 and by 20 bps to 6.3 per cent for 2026-27 due to 'higher levels of trade tensions and global uncertainty'. Since then, the tariff war waged by the US has eased somewhat, with IMF Chief Economist Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas calling the Trump administration's April actions an 'unprecedented escalation'. Moreover, global financial conditions have eased and the US dollar has weakened around 8 per cent since January, allowing the IMF to now project that the global GDP will grow 3 per cent in 2025 and 3.1 per cent in 2026, up from 2.8 per cent and 3 per cent, respectively, predicted in April. However, the IMF continued to warn that while the 'modest decline in trade tensions' had contributed to the resilience of the global economy, tariffs remain 'historically high' and global policy remains highly uncertain, with risks to the world 'firmly to the downside'. '…compared to our pre-April 2 forecast, global growth is revised downwards by 0.2pp (0.2 percentage points) this year. At around 3 per cent, global growth remains disappointingly below pre-COVID average. And we continue to project a persistent decline in global trade as a share of output despite the recent frontloading, from 57 per cent in 2024 to 53 per cent in 2030,' Gourinchas said. One percentage point is equal to 100 basis points. The other countries expected by the IMF to grow at a faster pace now in both 2025 and 2026 include the US, Canada, China, Brazil, Saudi Arabia, and Nigeria. China, in fact, received the largest growth forecast upgrade by the IMF, with its GDP now seen expanding 4.8 per cent in 2025, up from 4 per cent predicted in April. 'This revision reflects stronger-than-expected activity in the first half of 2025 and the significant reduction in US–China tariffs. The GDP outturn in the first quarter of 2025 alone implies a mechanical upgrade to the growth rate for the year of 0.6 percentage point. A recovery in inventory accumulation is expected to partly offset payback from front-loading in the second half of 2025. Growth in 2026 is also revised upward by 0.2 percentage point to 4.2 per cent, again reflecting the lower effective tariff rates,' the IMF said. China's GDP grew 5.4 per cent and 5.2 per cent in the first two quarters of 2025, beating forecasts, and keeping the world's second largest economy on track to meet the government's full-year growth target of 5 per cent. Siddharth Upasani is a Deputy Associate Editor with The Indian Express. He reports primarily on data and the economy, looking for trends and changes in the former which paint a picture of the latter. Before The Indian Express, he worked at Moneycontrol and financial newswire Informist (previously called Cogencis). Outside of work, sports, fantasy football, and graphic novels keep him busy. ... Read More
Business Recorder
2 days ago
- Business
- Business Recorder
Tax-to-GDP ratio
EDITORIAL: In the weekly briefing provided to Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif by the Chairman of the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) the rise in the tax-to-Gross Domestic Product (GDP) ratio by 1.5 percentage points to 10.5 percent was highlighted as a notable achievement to reach the government's target of 13 percent under its three-year reform agenda agreed with the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Three observations are critical. Total FBR collections (revised) as noted in the budget 2025–26 documents are 11,900 billion rupees in 2024-25 while the revised GDP for the year has been cited as 114,692 billion rupees which provides the tax-to-GDP ratio of 10.3 percent. One may assume that the additional 0.2 percent as claimed by the FBR chief to the Prime Minister indicated higher taxes collected than were projected in the budget documents. Be that as it may, on 1 July, the first day of fiscal 2025-26, FBR acknowledged that provisional collections were 11,722 billion rupees July-June 2025 (10.2 percent of revised GDP) instead of 11,900 billion rupees, a shortfall of 178 billion rupees, after the annual tax collection target was reduced from the budgeted 12,970 billion rupees but revised downward twice — to 12,334 billion rupees and then again to 11,900 billion rupees. Second, the 1.5 percent rise was achieved because the government failed to generate 124,160 billion rupees budgeted projection of GDP for last fiscal year with a significant shortfall of 9,468 billion rupees that can be attributed to contractionary monetary and fiscal policies, supported by the IMF, that were severely anti-growth. Had the budgeted GDP growth rate been achieved the projected tax-to-GDP ratio would have been 9.5 percent, that would have shown no rise in the tax-to-GDP ratio from 2023-24. The budget for fiscal year 2024-25 was approved by the Fund, and therefore it is unclear why the Fund agreed to a tax-to-GDP ratio which was the same as in the year before and analysts may well challenge the claim by the FBR that the rise is a component of the three-year reform agenda agreed with the Fund. What is, however, quite worrisome is that the failure to achieve the budgeted GDP growth for 2024-25 has led to not only to very high poverty levels in the country, 44.2 percent as calculated by the World Bank, but also high levels of unemployment, around 22 percent, as gleaned by independent economists from the digital housing survey of 2023. And finally, there is overwhelming empirical evidence that the government's reform efforts are focused on raising tax revenue rather than in reforming an unfair, inequitable and anomalous tax structure given that 75 to 80 percent of all FBR collections under direct taxes are being levied as withholding taxes in the sales tax mode which is an indirect tax whose incidence on the poor is greater than on the rich. Sadly, the FBR continues with this practice in spite of explicit instructions by the Auditor General of Pakistan to credit indirect taxes under the appropriate sub-heading. The focus of the incumbent government appears to be the same as during previous administrations: focus on raising total revenue rather than reforming the tax structure that is the reason behind sustained elite capture of revenue sources, the root cause of rising poverty levels. There is no doubt that the Finance Bill 2025 has increased the enforcement powers of the FBR officials, scaled down by the parliamentary committee, but even in their amended form they are being vociferously opposed by the industrial community and traders, and they are currently in abeyance. Their fate remains unclear, but to conclude one would hope that the focus of FBR shifts to amending the structure rather than to increase the burden on existing taxpayers to meet the too ambitious revenue targets. Copyright Business Recorder, 2025
&w=3840&q=100)
Business Standard
2 days ago
- Business
- Business Standard
NFO Alert! Zerodha MF launches Multi Asset Passive FoF: Should you invest?
Zerodha Multi Asset Passive FoF: Zerodha Fund House has launched Zerodha Multi Asset Passive FoF, an open-ended fund of fund scheme investing in units of equity, debt index funds/ETFs and commodity ETFs. The new fund offer (NFO) of the scheme is currently open for subscription and will close on August 8, 2025. According to the scheme information document (SID), the investment objective of the scheme is to provide diversified exposure across multiple asset classes-equity, debt, and commodities, through a passive investment approach. By blending asset classes with low correlation, this scheme seeks to offer better risk-adjusted returns while reducing overall portfolio volatility. However, there is no assurance or guarantee that the investment objective of the scheme will be achieved. The scheme will be benchmarked against 60 per cent Nifty 200 TRI, 15 per cent CRISIL 10-year Gilt Index, and 25 per cent Domestic prices of Physical Gold. Kedarnath Mirajkar will be the designated fund manager for the scheme. During the NFO, investors can invest a minimum of ₹100 and in multiples of ₹100 thereafter. On a continuous basis, investors can invest under the Scheme during the ongoing offer period with a minimum investment of ₹100 and in multiples of any amount thereafter. Zerodha Multi Asset Passive FoF: Who should invest? According to the SID, the product is suitable for investors seeking long-term wealth creation and diversified exposure by investing across multiple asset classes such as equity, debt index funds/ETS, and commodity ETFs. 'The Zerodha Multi Asset Passive FOF is a good starting point for those investors seeking to diversify through a simple, ready-made portfolio in a single investment', said Vishal Jain, chief executive officer at Zerodha Fund House. According to Vaibhav Jalan, chief business officer at Zerodha Fund House, this new fund takes the guesswork out of investing, offering diversification and easy access to multiple asset classes. "It is designed to be a no-brainer solution for anyone looking for a simple way to achieve their asset allocation goals,' he said. The principal invested in the scheme will be at Very High Risk, as per the risk-o-meter. However, investors should consult their financial advisors if in doubt whether the product is suitable for them.
Mint
3 days ago
- Business
- Mint
Wall Street Week Ahead: Spotlight on Fed rate decision, earnings from Microsoft, Meta Platforms, Apple, Amazon
Wall Street in the week ahead will receive plenty of economic data, Big Tech earnings, and the US Federal Reserve's fifth interest rate decision of the year. The economic calendar will see the release of data such as jobs report, second quarter GDP (Gross Domestic Product) numbers, personal income and spending data, PCE (Personal Consumption Expenditures) Index, and S&P manufacturing PMI report among others. For the Q2 earnings, investors will closely watch financial results from tech giants Microsoft, Meta Platforms, Apple, and e-commerce giant Amazon. On the monetary policy front, market participants were keenly awaiting the interest rate decision from the Federal Reserve, which is widely expected to hold it steady. Post-rate decision, Jerome Powell's press conference will be heavily scrutinized amid enormous criticism from US President Donald Trump. On Friday, Trump said that he believed that Fed Chair Jerome Powellmight be ready to lower rates. He made a rare visit to the central bank on Thursday after calling Powell a "numbskull" earlier in the week for failing to cut rates. On July 29 (Tuesday), separate reports on advanced US trade balance in goods for June, S&P Case-Shiller Home Price Index (20 cities) for May, consumer confidence for July, job openings for June will be released. On July 30 (Wednesday), separate reports on ADP employment for July, GDP Q2, pending home sales for June, FOMC interest rate decision will be declared. Fed Chair Jerome Powell's press conference is also scheduled on Wednesday. On July 31 (Thursday), separate reports on Employment Cost Index Q2, personal income and spending for June, PCE Index for June, and Chicago Business Barometer (PMI) for July will be released. On August 1 (Friday), US employment report for July, S&P final US manufacturing PMI for July, ISM manufacturing for July, construction spending for June, consumer sentiment (final) for July, and TBA Auto sales for July will be released. Following companies are due to report second quarter results in the week ahead — Waste Management, Nucor, Visa, Procter & Gamble, UnitedHealth, Boeing, PayPal, Microsoft, Meta Platforms, Qualcomm, Robinhood, eBay, Apple, Mastercard, Exxon Mobil, and Chevron. data-vars-page-type="story" data-vars-link-type="Manual">US stocks ended higher and dollar firmed on Friday ahead of a big week for market risk. The S&P 500 gained 26.73 points, or 0.42%, to end at 6,390.08 points, while the Nasdaq Composite gained 53.95 points, or 0.26%, to 21,111.90. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 213.74 points, or 0.48%, to 44,907.65. In the bond market, the yield on the 10-year Treasury eased to 4.38% from 4.43%. The 2-year Treasury yield held steady at 3.91%.
