Post-Budget gloom descends on exporters as full impact of fallout sinks in
The Budget has brought little for the exporters except disappointment and disillusionment. The promise made by the finance minister while presenting the interim Budget earlier this year of "imparting necessary stimulation to agriculture, industry and restoring dynamism to exports" in the regular Budget has not been kept.

Swadeshi pitch raises small business hopes of revival, growth
The Union Budget for 1998-99 has come up with a special revival and growth package for the small-scale sector which has for long been presenting its list of woes to successive governments but to no avail. Union Finance Minister Yashwant Sinha has raised their hopes by proposing to double the ceiling of the aggregate working capital limit, enhance the pivotal role assigned to the Small Industry Development Bank of India (Sidbi) in credit disbursal and raise the excise tax exemption limit from Rs 30 lakh to Rs 50 lakh.

Fernandes flays foreign nuclear powers for "hue and cry" over Pokharan tests
Defence minister George Fernandes on Saturday asked the P-5 countries to "stop making a hue and cry" over the Pokharan nuclear tests. The attitude of P-5 nations (US, France, Russia, Britain and China) "smacked of hypocrisy" as all of them possessed enough nuclear arsenal to destroy the whole world, said Fernandes while addressing mediapersons in Pune.