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Ahead of the Union Budget 2026-27, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Monday met leading economists to elicit their views on the forthcoming Budget. Those present at the meeting include Sajjid Chinoy, Neelkanth Misra, Dharmakirti Joshi, Ridham Desai, Sonal Varma and Indira Rajaraman. "Union Minister for Finance & Corporate Affairs Smt @nsitharaman chairs the first Pre-Budget Consultation with leading economists in connection with the upcoming Union Budget 2026-27, in New Delhi, today," the Ministry of Finance said in a social media post on X. "The meeting was also attended by Secretary, Department of Economic Affairs (DEA) @FinMinIndia; and Chief Economic Adviser, Government of India, besides senior officers from the DEA," it added. Sitharaman is likely to present the Budget on February 1. She will present the Budget in the backdrop of geopolitical uncertainties and the steep US tariff of 50 per cent imposed on shipments from India. The Budget for the next fiscal year will .
Bank-fintech collaborations are allowing for more proper pricing and risk underwriting, said Julapa Jagtiani, Senior Economic Advisor and Economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, on Thursday. Jagtiani was addressing a webinar on "Beyond Intuition: AI, Crypto, and Social Algorithms Shaping the Future of Finance", organised by Indian Institute of Management Bangalore (IIMB) Centre for Software and IT Management (CSITM). "When banks team up with vendors of AI solutions, we see more correct pricing of non-prime borrowers. Rather than pricing all as equally risky, AI differentiates who will default and who will not," said Jagtiani. The webinar was attended by more than 170 participants and included pre-eminent finance professionals from the United States, United Kingdom, and India. Apart from Jagtiani, the panel comprised Evelyn de Rothschild, Professor of Finance at Cambridge Judge Business School, Marina Niessner, Assistant Professor of Finance at Indiana University's ..
The monthly jobs report is already closely-watched on Wall Street and in Washington but has taken on a new importance after President Donald Trump on Friday fired the official who oversees it. Trump claimed that June's employment figures were "RIGGED" to make him and other Republicans "look bad". Yet he provided no evidence and even the official Trump had appointed in his first term to oversee the report, William Beach, condemned the firing of Erika McEntarfer, the director of the Bureau of Labour Statistics appointed by former President Joe Biden. The firing followed Friday's jobs report that showed hiring was weak in July and had come to nearly a standstill in May and June, right after Trump rolled out sweeping tariffs. Economists and Wall Street investors have long considered the job figures reliable, with share prices and bond yields often reacting sharply when they are released. Yet Friday's revisions were unusually large -- the largest, outside of a recession, in five decades.