Nearly three years after RITES, the consultancy arm of Indian Railways, prepared a preliminary project alignment design for the proposed dedicated freight corridor project, the railways are demanding 42 per cent more land for the project than what was previously envisaged.
The Centre and the state governments have agreed not to unilaterally change the tax rate on goods and services, once the Goods and Services Tax (GST) is implemented from April 2010.
Under the standard fire and special perils policy, everything is excluded other than whatever is named specifically in the cover. Removal restriction on an all-risk policy will also result in greater adoption of loss of profit insurance, which is a critical risk for any company. Insurance companies are likely to offer value-added services like a replacement car in case of a car breakdown and full compensation (without any depreciation) if the car is damaged.
This is the second project in the country in which a metro rail project is being undertaken through a PPP model after the 71-kilometre Hyderabad metro project was won by Maytas Infrastructure. According to industry sources, infrastructure major Larsen & Toubro had also initially shown interest for the project, but backed out finally.
The finance ministry has now decided to extend the coverage of the scheme to tax deducted at source and service tax returns to provide round-the-year work to the TRPs, as majority of existing prepares had shown signs of disinterest due to seasonality of their job. Previously, the ministry was planning to create a separate set of tax preparers for filing service tax returns.
Highway users will have to shell out more toll for using the roads that are constructed under the build-operate-transfer (BOT) scheme.
The government is pushing state-owned banks to offer interest rates on housing loans up to Rs 20 lakh (Rs 2 million) at pre-2004 levels.
Only 13 infrastructure companies attended the pre-bid conference at Rail Bhawan, compared with over 25 companies that had earlier submitted RFQs to the railways. Out of those 25, the railways had prepared a list of 13 companies which were technically qualified for the project. However, the RFQ was cancelled and a new set of documents was prepared.
The government aims to make highway projects more attractive to the private sector by raising the approved or sanctioned cost of all projects to be implemented under the private-public partnership mode by 15 per cent.
Over 50 per cent of the fishing vessels operating near the major ports on the country's western coast are unregistered, posing a threat to India's maritime security.
The rate cuts are expected to infuse Rs 80,000 crore into the banking system.
The government's ambitious highway projects under the public-private partnership mode are in serious trouble. Construction companies have either not put in bids or have withdrawn from 20 such projects, which fall under the build, operate and transfer scheme.
Interest charged by government lower than bank rates.
The government and Reserve Bank of India are working on measures that include relaxing norms for Non-Performing Assets (sticky loans) and prudential lending to kick-start key infrastructure projects.
A department committee, set up to look at ways to expand the TDS net, is scheduled to meet in Hyderabad to discuss the proposal. hile some services like contracts, construction and rentals are under the TDS net, a large number of services like beauty treatment, connectivity between mobile operators, event management, credit rating agencies, market research firms and authorised automobile service stations are not.
With the global financial crisis hurting more companies in developed countries, Indian insurance firms have hiked premium rates by 25-30 per cent for export credit insurance covers and have imposed a host of restrictions such as maximum liability and credit limit in case of single buyers.
In a move to boost liquidity, the government and the Reserve Bank of India are considering a special window to enable banks with farm loan relief scheme arrears, a major factor impacting liquidity, to raise funds. The move will help inject liquidity into the system till Parliament approves the Rs 25,000-crore reimbursement.
With the government and the Reserve Bank of India taking steps to ease the liquidity crunch, home borrowers and small enterprises may get 25-50 basis points relief from high interest rates in the short term.
The finance ministry is likely to float a discussion paper next month on the proposed new income tax law, which aims to simplify the existing law and phase out tax exemptions.
The decision by India and Pakistan to scale up the number of freight trains between the two countries to five a day has not yet materialised due to lack of sufficient freight traffic between the two countries. At present, two freight trains each from Pakistan and India cross the border post at Attari and Wagah every day.
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