World

India's Modi sets aside billions for jobs, allies in post-election budget

Published

2 years ago

July 23, 2024

India's Modi sets aside billions for jobs, allies in post-election budget

India’s government assigned billions of dollars for job creation and regions run by key coalition partners in a budget aimed at cementing the coalition and winning back voters after Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s election setback.

Tax changes unveiled in the budget included a higher levy on equity investments to allay concerns the market might be overheating and lower taxes for foreign companies to attract more investment.

INDIAN PM MODI VISITS RUSSIA VISIT FOR FIRST TIME SINCE START OF UKRAINE WAR

The $576 billion in total outlays included $32 billion for rural programs, $24 billion to be spent over five years to create jobs, and more than $5 billion for two states ruled by coalition partners.

“In this budget, we particularly focus on employment, skilling, small businesses, and the middle class,” Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said on Tuesday.

The government will also implement reforms across factors of production, including land and labor, she said.

Subsequent budgets would continue to focus on those areas, Sitharaman said while presenting her seventh annual budget.

Despite the new spending, India cut its fiscal deficit target to 4.9% of gross domestic product in fiscal year ending on March 31, 2025, from 5.1% in February’s interim budget, helped by a large surplus of $25 billion from the central bank.

The government also marginally reduced gross market borrowing to 14.01 trillion rupees.

Economist had blamed the distress in rural areas and a weak job market for a poor poll showing that cost Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) its absolute majority. They say land and labor reforms are essential for India to sustain strong economic growth.

Asia’s third-largest economy grew 8.2% in the past fiscal year and the government sees growth of 6.5% to 7% this fiscal year, a report showed on Monday.

India’s Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman holds up a folder with the Government of India’s logo as she leaves her office to present the union budget in the parliament in New Delhi, India, July 23, 2024. (REUTERS/Altaf Hussain)

Sakshi Gupta, principal economist at HDFC Bank, said the budget managed to strike a balance between policies supporting growth and maintaining fiscal discpline.However, implementing more ambitious reforms, will be “challenging” for the coalition, Gene Fang, associate managing director for sovereign risk at Moody’s Ratings, told Reuters.

Previous attempts to make it easier for companies to acquire land and lay off staff have repeatedly faced pushback from states concerned about protests such measures might provoke.

Among measures aimed at boosting employment, the budget included incentives for companies to train staff as well as and cheaper loans for higher education, Sitharaman said.

India’s reported urban unemployment rate is 6.7%, but private agency the Centre For Monitoring Indian Economy pegs it higher, at 8.4%.

The budget also maintains spending on long-term infrastructure projects at 11.11 trillion rupees, with states assigned 1.5 trillion rupees in long-term loans to fund such expenditure. Some will be linked to reform milestones in areas such as land and labor, which Sitharaman said the government intended to push in its third term.

In a concession to the government’s allies, Sitharaman said it would hasten loans from multilateral agencies for the eastern state of Bihar and the southern state of Andhra Pradesh.

TAX CHANGES

India raised to 20% from 15% its tax rate for equity investments held for less than a year, while the rate for those held longer than 12 months rose to 12.5% from 10%. The taxes will be applicable from Wednesday.

The government also increased the tax on equity derivative transactions that have drawn retail investors, which will be implemented from Oct. 1.

Shares and the rupee declined after the budget announcement but recovered most of the losses with main stock indexes .NSEI, .BSESN ending the day down about 0.13%.

The tax changes were a short-term negative for the market, but could pay off in the longer term, said Vineet Arora, investment manager at Singapore-based NAV Capital Emerging Star Fund.

“It is expected to help in stabilizing the market and attracting investors with a long-term perspective on the Indian economy,” Arora said.

Corporate tax for foreign companies was cut to 35% from 40%, with the aim of encouraging more investment, while a lower tax burden for lower income consumers, expected to encourage spending, helped drive consumer stocks to record highs.

World

Supreme Court rejects Virginia’s bid to restore congressional map favoring Democrats

Published

10 hours ago

May 16, 2026

Press Room

Supreme Court rejects Virginia’s bid to restore congressional map favoring Democrats

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Friday rejected Virginia’s bid to restore a congressional map that would have given Democrats a chance to pick up four seats in the closely divided House of Representatives.

The court’s order, issued without any noted dissent, is the latest twist in the nation’s mid-decade redistricting competition. It was kicked off last year by President Donald Trump urging Republican-controlled states to redraw their lines and was supercharged by a recent Supreme Court ruling severely weakening the Voting Rights Act that opened up even more winnable seats for the GOP.

In recent days, the justices have sided with Republicans in Alabama and Louisiana who hope to redo their congressional maps to produce more GOP-leaning seats following the court’s voting rights decision.

But the Virginia situation was different, stemming from a 4-3 ruling by the Virginia Supreme Court that struck down a constitutional amendment that voters narrowly passed just last month.

The state court found that the Democratic-controlled legislature improperly began the process of placing the amendment on the ballot after early voting had begun in Virginia’s general election last fall.

The Supreme Court typically doesn’t intervene in state court proceedings unless they present an issue of federal law. Virginia Democrats had hoped to persuade the justices that the Virginia court misread federal law and Supreme Court precedent that hold that, even if early voting is underway, an election does not happen until Election Day itself.

Virginia’s amendment had been intended as a response to Republican gains in Texas, Missouri, North Carolina and Ohio, and to blunt a new map in Florida that just became law. Once the Virginia amendment passed, it briefly turned the nationwide redistricting scramble into a draw between the two parties.

That was unraveled by the Virginia Supreme Court’s decision.

The state’s attorney general, Democrat Jay Jones, slammed the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision, saying it was another example of what he described as a national attack on voting rights and the rule of law.

“Let’s be clear about what is happening. Donald Trump, Republican state legislatures, and conservative courts are systematically and unabashedly tilting power away from the people for Trump’s political gain,” Jones said in a statement issued late Friday night.

The state’s top Democrats had disagreed about whether it was even too late for help from the Supreme Court. “Time grows short, but it is not yet too late,” lawyers for the Democratic leaders of the legislature as well as the state told the justices in a brief filed Friday.

A day earlier, the office of Democratic Gov. Abigail Spanberger already had confirmed that the state will hold this year’s elections under the current districts established in 2021. Last month, Virginia Commissioner of Elections Steve Koski said a court order was needed by this past Tuesday to set the district lines for primary elections on Aug. 4.

Spanberger reacted to Friday’s decision by saying both courts had nullified the votes of the more than 3 million Virginians who cast ballots in the April 21 special election.

“These Virginians made their voices heard — casting their ballots in good faith to push back against a President who said he’s ‘entitled’ to more seats in Congress before voters go to the polls,” she posted on her X account.

The leader of the state Republican Party said the justices made the right call.

“Wisely, the Supreme Court of the United States has confirmed the judgment of the Supreme Court of Virginia,” state party chairman Jeff Ryer said. “This should once and for all put to rest the Democrats’ effort to disenfranchise half of Virginia.

___

Associated Press writer Safiyah Riddle in Montgomery, Alabama, contributed to this report.

World

Trump says Abu-Bilal al-Minuki, second in command of ISIS globally, killed in US-Nigerian operation

Published

11 hours ago

May 16, 2026

Press Room

Trump says Abu-Bilal al-Minuki, second in command of ISIS globally, killed in US-Nigerian operation

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President Donald Trump announced late Friday that U.S. and Nigerian forces carried out an operation that killed a global ISIS leader.

Trump identified the terrorist as Abu-Bilal al-Minuki, whom he described as ISIS’s second-in-command globally.

“Tonight, at my direction, brave American forces and the Armed Forces of Nigeria flawlessly executed a meticulously planned and very complex mission to eliminate the most active terrorist in the world from the battlefield,” Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social.

“Abu-Bilal al-Minuki, second in command of ISIS globally, thought he could hide in Africa, but little did he know we had sources who kept us informed on what he was doing,” Trump continued. “He will no longer terrorize the people of Africa, or help plan operations to target Americans.”

100 US TROOPS LAND IN NIGERIA AS ISLAMIC MILITANTS THREATEN WEST AFRICA REGIONAL SECURITY

President Donald Trump sits at a table monitoring military operations during Operation Epic Fury against Iran at the White House in Washington, D.C., on March 2. (The White House via X Account/Anadolu/Getty Images)

Trump also thanked the Nigerian government for its cooperation in the mission.

“With his removal, ISIS’s global operation is greatly diminished,” he added.

Additional details surrounding the mission were not immediately available.

Fox News Digital has reached out to the White House for comment.

US MILITARY IN SYRIA CARRIES OUT 10 STRIKES ON MORE THAN 30 ISIS TARGETS: PHOTOS

The announcement comes after U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) said it carried out multiple strikes against more than 30 ISIS targets in Syria in February as part of a joint military effort to “sustain relentless military pressure on remnants from the terrorist network.”

CENTCOM said U.S. forces struck ISIS infrastructure and weapons-storage targets using fixed-wing, rotary-wing and unmanned aircraft.

DEADLY STRIKE ON US TROOPS TESTS TRUMP’S COUNTER-ISIS PLAN — AND HIS TRUST IN SYRIA’S NEW LEADER

The U.S. military carried out ten strikes against more than 30 ISIS targets in Syria following a December ambush that killed U.S. troops. (CENTCOM)

Trump told reporters on Jan. 27 that he had a “great conversation” with Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa.

“All of the things having to do with Syria in that area are working out very, very well,” he said at the time. “So, we are very happy about it.”

CENTCOM announced in February that more than 50 ISIS terrorists had been killed or captured and more than 100 ISIS infrastructure targets struck during two months of targeted operations in Syria.

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The U.S. launched Operation Hawkeye Strike in response to an ISIS ambush that killed two U.S. service members and an American interpreter Dec. 13, 2025, in Palmyra, Syria.

Fox News Digital’s Ashley J. DiMella contributed to this report.