According to senior officials, the Railways is expected to fall short of the 1,195 million tonnes (MT) of freight target fixed for 2015-16 by 75-80 MT.

The National Green Tribunal has ordered immediate ban on registration of diesel vehicles in Delhi and on renewal of registration of such vehicles which are more than 10 years old.

The sheer size of the Chinese economy, which has shot well past the $10 trillion mark, dwarfs the Indian economy which is still hovering around the $2 trillion level.

The smart city scheme as of now envisages only a \"viability gap funding\" from the government side, which is expected to be a small portion of the total investment and may not be a sufficient attraction.

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley is also scheduled to hold the customary post-Budget meeting with the boards of Sebi and RBI on Sunday to impress upon the them the need to be proactive to promote financial inclusion and boost growth.

While prices of wheat and rice have been going up despite overflowing stocks in FCI godowns, the profitability of the Railways has been hit as well as wagons are being held up for days and cannot be used to move other goods.

The ministry of mines is now looking into a complaint alleging that the Sindesar Khurd mining development project, which was at an advanced stage of planning for production with a whopping 81 million tonnes of geologically proven ore reserves of zinc, lead and silver clearly indicated in the previous balance sheets of the company, was not considered in the valuation of HZL during the initial stake sale to Sterlite Opportunities and Ventures Ltd.

Gita Gopinath, professor of economics at Harvard University, Arvind Subramanian, senior fellow at Peterson Institute for International Economics, and Rajiv B. Lall, executive chairman of IDFC, are in the race for the post of chief economic adviser.

The finance ministry is veering round to the view that use of 'moral suasion' by the RBI to get seven leading commercial banks in the country to hike interest rates for NRI deposits would be a quicker and neater way to get more foreign capital than the issue of bonds.

The finance ministry will announce a major package next week as part of an all-out effort to curtail the widening current account deficit (CAD), which has sent the rupee into a free fall and further weakened the economy.

The department of industrial and policy promotion (DIPP) has given the go ahead to a proposal of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) to allow foreign direct investment (FDI) in shares of a company only through an escrow mechanism.

The Congress, in its efforts to camouflage the potholes in the economy, has clearly joined the race to captivate the minds of an aspirational India in its last ditch attempt to corner the vote before the next year general elections.

As part of the UPA government's strategy to woo women voters in the run-up to the 2014 general elections, Union finance minister P. Chidambaram is expected to present a \"gender budget\".

The finance ministry is making a desperate dash to the wire to contain the runaway fiscal deficit at 5.3 pc of GDP at the fag end of the financial year. A senior financial ministry official says that no funds will be released to departments in the last quarter unless they provide \"utilisation certificates\" for previous allocations.

The GMR Group appears to be headed for trouble with the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways looking at the company's termination of the Rs 7,200-cr Kishangarh-Udaipur-Ahmedabad highway contract as a \"unilateral\" act not permissible under the agreement it signed with the NHAI.

The investigation into the $100-million investment made by US retail giant Walmart in the Bharti Group has gathered further momentum.

The Manmohan Singh govt is ready to ram through the next batch of economic reforms, including a hike in the foreign direct investment limit for pension funds to 49 per cent and amendment in the Forward Contract (Regulation) Act.

Manmohan govt is poised to push through its next set of big-ticket economic reforms at a Cabinet meeting scheduled for Friday. These will include setting up a National Investment Board to fast-track approvals for mega-infra projects and a hike in the FDI limit in the insurance sector to 49 per cent from 26 per cent.

Consumers will have to fork out more for using electricity from next year as power sector reforms kick in to bail out loss-making utilities run by state governments.

The UPA has decided to push ahead with key reforms peppered with lot of 'common man' schemes to dent West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee's frontal assault. The next Cabinet meetings will unveil many more reform measures.