The number of Indian billionaires rose to 140 this year from 102 in 2020, despite the Covid-19 pandemic hit and increasing unemployment in India, according to Forbes World’s Billionaires list 2021.

India reported the third highest number of billionaires across the world, with a combined wealth of $596 billion — nearly double from last year when it shrunk 23 per cent to $313 billion.

The three richest Indians in the Forbes list, who added over $100 billion between them, are Mukesh Ambani, chairman of Reliance Industries Ltd, Gautam Adani, chairman of Adani Group, and Shiv Nadar, former chairman of HCL Technologies.

The number of the world’s wealthiest too increased on an unprecedented scale as Forbes added 660 new billionaires in its list for this year taking the tally to 2,755. The US reported the most number of billionaires at 724 followed by China (including Hong Kong and Macau) at 698.

India’s central bank said it has revised its inflation-forecasting model to better capture how fiscal and monetary policy interact with real-economy elements.

The adjustments incorporate fiscal-monetary dynamics, India’s unique and often chaotic fuel pricing regime, and exchange-rate fluctuations and their impact on balance of payments, the Reserve Bank of India said in its latest bi-annual monetary policy report published Wednesday.

Dubbed as the Quarterly Projection Model 2.0, the RBI’s economists describe the framework as a forward-looking, open economy, calibrated, new-Keynesian gap model. The previous version had often been criticized for over-estimating upside risks to inflation.

Bharti Airtel said that it has entered into an agreement with Reliance Jio Infocomm to transfer the ‘Right to Use’ of its 800 MHz spectrum in Andhra Pradesh (3.75 MHz), Delhi (1.25 MHz) and Mumbai (2.50 MHz) to Jio.

Through this agreement, which is subject to statutory approvals, Airtel will receive a consideration of Rs 1037.6 crores from Jio for the proposed transfer.

In addition, Jio will assume future liabilities of Rs 459 crores relating to the spectrum.

Jio said that the trading agreement is in accordance with the Spectrum Trading Guidelines issued by the Department of Telecommunications. "The aggregate value for the right to use this spectrum is Rs 1,497 crores, inclusive of present value of associated deferred payment liability of Rs 459 crores, subject to any transaction related adjustments."

Before deciding to tax interest earned by private sector employees contributing over Rs 2.5 lakh towards provident fund from April 2021, the government had decided to bring employers’ contribution of over Rs 7.5 lakh towards retirement savings into the tax net last year.

In the previous year’s Budget, finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman had decided to tax employers’ contributions to provident fund, National Pension System (NPS) and approved superannuation funds in excess of Rs 7.5 lakh annually as a perquisite in the hands of employees, apart from the annual accretion on the “excess contribution”.

To begin with, the income tax officials in North Block took 13 months to ready the rule, which came on March 5 this year — less than four weeks before the close of the fiscal year.

Amid the rising fuel prices, Union Petroleum Minister Dharmendra Pradhan on Sunday hinted that petrol, diesel & LPG prices will reduce in the near future. This is primarily because the situation in the international market has vastly improved.

"Petrol, diesel and LPG prices have started reducing now and they'll reduce further in the coming days. We had stated earlier also that we'll transfer benefits from a decrease in crude oil prices in the international market to the end customers," Pradhan said, as reported by news agency ANI.

Earlier, Pradhan had reiterated that retail fuel prices in India are governed by the rates in international rates as the country is 85 percent which is dependent on crude oil imports to meet its need.