The government on Wednesday invited investments from non-resident Indians (NRIs), saying huge opportunities exist for them in areas like manufacturing.

The New Year offers great investment opportunities for retail investors as the country's economy looks to emerge from a prolonged lean phase. This is, therefore, time for investors to make smart decisions to reap the benefits of a reviving economy.

Satyajit Das, author of Extreme Money: The Masters of the Universe and the Cult of Risk, says India's poor public finances, weak international position, structurally flawed businesses, poor infrastructure, corruption and political atrophy threaten to overwhelm its future prospects.

India should reduce its debt within 5-6 years by putting fiscal policy on the right path, but \"draconian changes\" are not the answer, said Planning Commission Deputy Chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia on Thursday.

India's oil imports from Iran fell 34.8 per cent in April-November from a year ago, despite a jump last month, giving the government room to import more till March and still win another waiver of US sanctions.

BNP Paribas believes that concerns about tapering of stimulus by the US Fed might crop up from time to time, the impact of such concerns on the Indian market could be far lower when tapering actually starts.

Mining has faced multiple problems in recent years. There have been problems in acquiring land for new mines and delays in government approvals. Increased judicial scrutiny following corruption scandals in the allotment of mining blocks and environmental degradation caused by illegal mining have made matters worse.

The removal of the EU restrictions on insurance opens the door for Indian refiners to increase imports to contract levels without breaching sanctions that remain in place limiting Iran's overall exports to around 1 million barrels per day.

Without second-generation reforms and a drastic overhaul of its institutions, India is condemned to mediocre income and growth, says Business Today Editor Chaitanya Kalbag.

As market experts play the guessing game, investors are looking for answer to a question that is as old as stock markets themselves - is this a good time to buy equities, especially when economic data show a wobbly economy that cannot possibly support a sustained market rally?

The government will have to rein in spending and cut subsidies to meet its fiscal deficit target, Finance Minister P Chidambaram said, underlining that an austerity drive will not be blown off course by an election due next year.

China, the US government's largest creditor, is \"naturally concerned about developments in the US fiscal cliff\", Vice Finance Minister Zhu Guangyao said, in the Chinese government's first public response to the October 17 deadline in the United States for raising the debt ceiling.

Business Today Editor Chaitanya Kalbag says the ADB thinks GDP will grow by 5.7 per cent in 2014/15, but it is not as if the tendencies in the Indian economy will go away magically after the elections.

While addressing the state food ministers conference on the Bill, Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar also said \"there is no question of having any reservations for a social security programme covering the poor and needy sector of the society.\"

Industrialist Vijay Mallya has blamed \"policy paralysis\" for India's slow growth, saying that the economic slowdown has dampened even the spirits industry.

Critics say the bill is a hurried piece of legislation that rests on an already crumbling programme, the Public Distribution System (PDS), which has failed to provide food security, despite being in place for five decades.

The trouble is that our policy dinosaurs don't view inflation as a problem or growth as fragile. The result is that investors, both domestic and foreign, who have to deal with the real economy, have lost confidence, writes Business Today Editor Chaitanya Kalbag.

The government is confident the new food security programme, which is to be implemented over the next 12 months, will not adversely impact the fiscal situation.

The patriotism of wealthy overseas Indians has helped the country avert economic crises in the past and it is little surprise that embattled policymakers are turning to them again to plug a record trade gap that is battering the rupee.

While assuring investors that the rupee will stabilise, Finance Minister P Chidambaram also said the fiscal deficit would be contained at 4.8 per cent of the GDP even after doling out subsidies for the implementation of the Food Security Bill.