The finance ministry has initiated an internal survey of the faceless regime to examine its effectiveness.
Radhakishan S Damani, investor and promoter of the D-Mart supermarket chain, has broken into the elite club of the top 100 global billionaires. Damani, who grew up in a single-room apartment in Mumbai, is now ranked 98th on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index with $19.2 billion as his net worth. The index is a daily ranking of the world's richest people. The other Indians on the top 100 rich list ahead of Damani are Mukesh Ambani, Gautam Adani, Azim Premji, Shiv Nadar, and Lakshmi Mittal.
'For HNIs, shifting economic activities outside India by creating regional hubs for businesses is a better option.'
The government is exploring legal options, including bringing an Ordinance, to tackle the problem of income-tax litigation on reassessment notices under old, time-barred norms, according to official sources. This has come in the wake of writ petitions filed by companies and individuals in recent weeks to challenge the validity of the notices issued by the tax department between April 1 and June 30 and under the old norms.
Now that almost 10 infrastructure ministries have submitted a fresh list of their core infrastructure assets, the government has realised it stands to make much more money from asset monetisation than previously thought. Two persons in the government said it stood to garner over 30 per cent more than the earlier estimates of Rs 2.5 trillion over the next four years under the National Monetisation Pipeline (NMP). The NMP, which is being prepared by Niti Aayog, is in the advanced stages of finalisation and is expected to be unveiled in August.
The deluge of offerings in the primary market, a muted results season and increasing talks of a Fed taper may quicken the pace of overseas investors selling Indian equities in the near term. The next few weeks may see a dozen companies tap the market for initial public offerings and raise about Rs 30,000 crore. These include the likes of Zomato, Glenmark Life Sciences, Utkarsh Small Finance Bank and Seven Islands Shipping.
'Q1 is going to bear the brunt of the second wave, exposing full-year GDP forecasts to downward revisions, unless phase-3 of vaccination is executed quickly.'
The much-anticipated cryptocurrency bill, however, is missing from the list, reports Shrimi Choudhary.
Maintaining a rapid pace of the vaccination drive and quickly bridging healthcare infrastructure gaps across both urban and rural areas would emerge as the most sustainable stimulus for durable recovery of the Indian economy, says a report by the department of economic affairs.
The probe agency is learnt to have taken possession of multiple physical and digital records during a search operation conducted on the premises of the South Korean firm in Delhi and Mumbai this week.
The finance ministry on Wednesday reimposed expenditure curbs on ministries and government departments for July-September quarter. There will be no spending restrictions on the ministries of health, rural development, agriculture, MSME (micro, small and medium enterprises) and railways as part of a two-pronged strategy. "The existing guidelines for expenditure control have been reviewed. "Keeping in view the evolving situation arising out of Covid-19 and anticipated cash position of the government, it is felt essential to regulate Quarterly Expenditure Plan (QEP)/Monthly Expenditure Plan (MEP) of specific ministries/departments for July-September, 2021," the Department of Economic Affairs in the finance ministry said in a notification.
'As valuations of large-caps appeared to be out of whack, investors started lapping up quality mid-caps and small-caps, which were available at relatively comfortable valuations.'
Direct economic stimulus measures such as tax cuts for individuals and industry would have helped to prop up the Indian economy which was hit hard by the lockdowns across several states in India, say economists and corporate leaders. While the measures announced on Monday are focussed more on the supply side, these steps would take a lot of time to move the needle for the economy.
'While the country has been hit hard from a strong second wave of Covid, we believe the markets are willing to look through that.'
The Goods and Services Tax (GST) Council, chaired by Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, will likely consider on Saturday a GST rate cut for Covid-19 relief essentials and drugs for treating the black fungus disease and might leave the vaccines untouched. The meeting is being held following a report submitted by a Group of Ministers (GoM) to the GST Council on Monday. The GoM, set up by the Council on May 28, was mandated to look at tax exemption and concessions on various Covid items including vaccines, drugs, and equipment.
'I would recommend two parts to fiscal support. One, support the lower end of the society by direct intervention through ways such as direct benefit cash transfer. Second, give fiscal support to the stressed sectors in line with the Rs 3-lakh crore (Rs 3 trillion) emergency credit line guarantee norms'
The Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) has deferred the diktat requiring foreign investors to disclose their mobile number, email addresses and income details to depositories, a move believed to be aimed at curbing practices such as round tripping and money laundering. "Based on the representations received from MIIs (market infrastructure institutions), Sebi has decided to extend the deadline for making 6-KYC attributes mandatory for new accounts opened by 1 month to July 1, 2021. "Participants are accordingly requested to take note of the above and ensure compliance," NSDL said in a note on Tuesday. The regulator is also meeting custodians this week to thrash out a solution and address investors' concerns.
India's economy is unlikely to see double-digit growth and may grow between 8 per cent and 9 per cent this fiscal year (2021-22, or FY22), against the estimated 11.5 per cent, according to leading economists and rating agencies. The downward revision of growth projections to as low as 10 per cent is mostly on account of stringency in restrictions by states, relatively slow vaccination pace, and the possibility of a third wave of the pandemic. However, they say the impact will not be as severe as the first wave, and expect the first quarter to see positive growth.
'It is critical that the Covid curve does not have a fat tail and the chain is broken quickly.'
The two central premier investigative agencies - Central Bureau of Investigation and Enforcement Directorate - have asked their officials to focus more on digital evidence, e-forums and social media to crack down on offenders. These are a crucial part of prosecution amid the second wave of the pandemic. The Income Tax Department is going full throttle on data analytics to issue notices in time-bound cases. Further, sleuths have been given electronic devices including laptops with secure connections, which keep data encrypted and inaccessible.
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