'There has been an enormous amount of attention paid to issues like capital account convertibility, bank privatisation and bank priority sector norms. There are many other areas where reforms are less controversial, but perhaps as important,' the report of the high-level Committee on Financial Sector Reforms headed by Raghuram Rajan, a professor at Graduate School of Business, University of Chicago, said.
The industry department had planned to get 10,000 price quotations from producers in order to have a new-look WPI, which incorporates a better snapshot of the economy. Out of this, 8,000 products are manufactured items. However, it now emerges that the DIPP may get price quotations from only 6,400 industrial units and factories.
The commerce and industry ministry is in talks with state governments to prepare guidelines for setting up local governance bodies inside these tax-free industrial enclaves. Sources said these bodies may either be modelled on the lines of townships developed by state industrial development authorities like the New Okhla Industrial Development Authority (Noida) in Uttar Pradesh, or follow a Jamshedpur-like model, where a corporate house takes care of civic infrastructure.
The Income Tax Department has put real estate firms, who developed housing projects for low- and medium-income groups, under the scrutiny for wrongful tax exemption claims.
The CEPAs with South Korea and Japan are likely to be concluded in September and October, respectively. While the pact with South Korea is likely to have only a moderate impact on the economic relationship between the two countries, the one with Japan will immensely help the Indian industry in gaining market access in the world's second largest economy. Currently, bilateral trade between India and Japan, which is currently close to $4 billion.
The Central Board of Direct Taxes is considering a proposal to widen the ambit of the Annual Information Return to cover cash cards issued by non-banking financing companies in the country, official sources said. The AIR currently covers seven kinds of transactions, including cash deposits in savings bank accounts of over Rs 10 lakh in a year, credit card billing of over Rs 200,000 a year and purchase of property over Rs 30 lakhs (Rs 3 million).
A separate law for faster enforcement of high-value business contracts is on the anvil. The aim is to boost the business and investment climate in India, a country that many perceive is bedevilled by difficulties in doing business.
Indian exporters are not opening the bubbly yet despite a rapid depreciation of the rupee, which fell to a 17-month low of Rs 44.17 against the US dollar on Tuesday before rising to close at Rs 43.85.
India's trade envoys to the World Trade Organization are comfortable with the proposed norms on concentration of tariff cuts, but are firm that the sectoral proposals at the Doha Round will have an adverse impact on the country's economy.
Decision on additional Rs 2 lakh debt at 7% rate shortly.
Even as World Trade Organization director general Pascal Lamy has claimed that a successful Doha Round will lead to rich nations undertaking steeper tariff cuts than developing and poor nations, an analysis of the proposals shows the opposite may be true.
In another instance of Indian tax authorities adopting a hard-nosed stance to prevent abuse of tax avoidance treaties, the revenue department recently opposed a proposal of a Cyprus-based company to increase its stake in an Indian telecom services company from 40 per cent to nearly 74 per cent.
The Income Tax Department has decided to hike the tax deducted at source rate to 10 per cent, taking the total incidence to 11.33 per cent (including 3 per cent education cess and 10 per cent surcharge), as against the existing incidence of 2.33 per cent, official sources told Business Standard.
Be ready to pay service charges if you are sending money home using the State Bank of India's network of over 10,000 branches.
The government is likely to list four or five more of state-owned companies, which include Satluj Jal Vidyut Nigam Ltd, Manganese Ore India Ltd and Cochin Shipyard, by March next year. A senior government official said the government plans to dilute up to 10 per cent in these companies.
The government may defer the implementation of the sixth Pay Commission award by a year or even two to reduce the fiscal burden of the recommendations that proposed a 28 per cent across-the-board salary increase for an estimated 4.5 million central government employees. The report of the commission headed by Justice BN Srikrishna was submitted to the government on March 24 this year, nearly a fortnight before its 18-month tenure was to end.
The Delhi-headquartered bank had favoured private placement over an initial public offer due to the stock market's volatility, a source familiar with the development said. "An initial public offer now is out of question," the source said. The private placement of shares is likely to be with public sector companies Life Insurance Corporation, UTI and Small Industries Development Bank of India but private sector participation is not completely ruled out.
Storm clouds of a different kind are gathering on the macro-economic horizon and they have nothing to do with surging global crude oil prices. The monsoon has played truant across large parts of India, with western and southern India reeling under the impact of deficient and scanty rainfall
The move is being viewed as an effort by the government to expand the taxpayer base.
Land acquisition for special economic zones is stuck because of a year-old directive by the Empowered Group of Ministers that bars state governments from carrying out compulsory acquisition of land for the zones.
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