Industry representatives recommended that the basic annual exemption limit for individuals should be raised to Rs 1,50,000 from Rs 1,10,000 and the peak income tax rate be cut to 25 per cent, from 30 per cent at present.
The chairman of the Securities and Exchange Board of India, M Damodaran, said on Wednesday public sector companies will have to comply with Clause 49 of the listing agreement for stock exchanges. However, few government-owned companies have met the Clause 49 stipulation (the table shows the state of play in some large government-owned companies).
A majority of the CEOs polled said the emerging political situation at the Centre could derail the pending economic reforms agenda (nuclear power, foreign direct investment in retail, etc).
Tata Motors is expected to unveil its Rs 1-lakh car, which has been the subject of much debate recently and is now being called the People's Car by the company. Maruti Suzuki will showcase two small cars, the A-Star and the Splash. Both these cars are headed for the Indian roads.
The government will soon announce a slew of tax incentives for infrastructure and technological upgrade in the TV and entertainment sector.
Communications Minister A Raja has made it clear to bureaucrats in his ministry that there is no question of any change in the entry fee to be paid by a company for getting a unified access service licence, which allows an operator to offer mobile and fixed line services. In an unusually strong hand-written noting (not the first time that the 42-year old lawyer turned politician has done so) on a file relating to licences and related issues, Raja castigated senior officials.
In another setback to Big Pharma, US drug major Eli Lilly's blockbuster erectile dysfunction drug Cialis (generic name:Tadalafil) has failed to qualify for a product patent in India after the basic constituent of the medicine was found to be a known substance, developed and patented by Indian scientists 32 years ago.
A study by economic think-tank Icrier (Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations) has found that any adverse impact of organised retail on mom-and-pop stores will wear off over a period of time. Organised retail, it has said, will not lead to job losses and will, in fact, raise farmers' earnings.
Many new players have challenged the offer by Bharti Airtel to pay Rs 2,650 crore (Rs 26.50 billion) to get a start-up GSM spectrum of 4.4 MHz. While some say they will up the ante and are planning to write to the government that they can offer more, others say the offer is meant to keep away new competitors.
The company is also looking at recruiting employees from outside India, especially for services and expertise that people in India lack.
Chevron Corporation, one of the world's largest global energy companies, may pull out of Reliance Petroleum (RPL) by selling its 5 per cent equity to Reliance Industries.
For instance, Tata Consultancy Services recently won a $200 million deal in Mexico, Wipro announced the opening of a development centre in Australia, and Infosys announced the setting up of 'The New Growth Engines' business unit in Latin America.
The move may be part of Budget 2008-09, a senior government official said.
The Election Commission, for the first time, has banned bulk text (SMS) messaging either by candidates standing for an election or by political parties to voters in the 48 hour period before start of voting in Assembly constituencies in Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh.As this ban is likely to be extended to all future elections, mobile service providers will have to live with the idea of losing what used to be a revenue windfall for them during elections.
The judge gave the ruling while dismissing a petition filed by the Commissioner of Customs. The court upheld the Customs, Excise and Services Tax Appellate Tribunal's earlier judgement, stating that the interpretation by the tribunal was in consonance with the Computers (Additional Duty) Rules, 2004.
A slew of real estate companies, like DLF, Omaxe, BPTP and Avnija Properties (Dalmia Cement), and large corporations like telecom bigwig AT&T, Sterlite, Videocon, JSW Power, Hinduja's HTMT, Moser Baer Infrastructure, Ispat Industries Ltd and a Sam Pitroda-owned company are among the 25 companies whose applications will not be immediately processed by the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) for awarding mobile licences.
Cyber criminals are targeting enterprises and consumers based in tier-III cities. Internet bots (derived from the word web robots) are software applications that run automated tasks over the Internet. They are used for both commercial as well as malicious purposes.
Carlos Ghosn, the iconic CEO of Nissan Motors and Renault, is on a whistle-stop visit to India on Monday to finalise a joint venture and small-car blue-print with India's second-largest two-wheeler maker Bajaj Auto. Renault, Nissan and M&M also have a three-way equity tie-up to make passenger vehicles in Chennai, for which the facility is yet to be built.
Anand Jain , best known for his childhood friendship with Reliance Industries chief Mukesh Ambani, is now creating waves in the stock markets after his little-known company sold shares worth Rs 2,800 crore to a clutch of leading foreign investors such as Blue Ridge and Tiger.
The Sebi think-tank is of the view that more and more sophisticated products should be available onshore to ensure that Indian capital markets attract different categories of investors, even while it wants to discourage all kinds of offshore products based on Indian stocks and derivatives, according to sources. Proposals for allowing short-selling in cash markets and stock lending and borrowing for institutional investors have been pending for some time.
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