Orissa is expected to gain an additional revenue of Rs 4000-5000 crore from the mining sector if the Centre introduces Mineral Resource Rent Tax (MRRT).

CM Naveen Patnaik has been demanding introduction of MRRT on windfall gains made by the miners to ensure that the super normal profits earned from mining activities do not get accumulated in the hands of few merchant miners and for this the CM has has written to Union minister of state for mines Dinsha Patel in order to seek an intervention of PM for levy of MRRT on miners.

West Bengal government to introduce bio-metric job cards to the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) beneficiaries to facilitate early payment for jobs done by them. The cards would enable the beneficiaries to get their payments on a daily basis instead of the long waiting period stretching often up to a month. The Mamata Banerjee-led state government aimed to provide up to 50 days' job under the Employment Guarantee programme.

Pakistan issued a notification for switching over to a negative list regime for trade with India, where the number of products facing a bar on import from the eastern neighbour will come down to 1,209. As per the notification, 1,209 items have been included in the negative list and will not be importable from India. Of the importable items from India, 137 products can be brought in from India through the Wagah land border crossing.

In February 2012, Pakistan had declared that it would be shifting from a positive list regime to a smaller negative list for trade with India in order to normalise bilateral trading relations.

Opposition parties attacked the government for the ‘obscenity’ of its poverty estimate figures. The Opposition pointed that even the recently released Household Amenities and Assets Census of 2011 showed the extent of poverty in different spheres but the Commission had set an “absurdly low” national poverty line of Rs 22.4 per day for an adult in rural areas and Rs 28.65 per day for an adult in urban areas in 2009-10.  

They condemned the use of fraudulent methods to deliberately underestimate the level of poverty and held that in spite of the outrage when the Commission had given its earlier estimates to the Supreme Court, it had retained the same poverty measure suggested by the Tendulkar committee. The Opposition sought an estimate of the poor based on the calorific value of food and to take a composite view of poverty, based not just on livelihood but also on shelter and clothing.

India is gearing up to select the winner of the $2-billion tender for six mid-air refuelers for its air force, with both the contending planes from European consortium EADS Airbus and Russian Ilyushin clearing the flight trials. The Indian defence ministry is now considering the bids to arrive at the lowest bidder in the tender issued in September 2010. India is looking for 6 refuelers. The tender had been reissued by the government after the Airbus' A330MRTT was selected by the Indian Air Force as the winner of an earlier tender in 2009 but was later cancelled in January 2010 as the the finance ministry objected to the "high cost" for the A330MRTT.