The 40 per cent commission charge has once again come to the fore to haunt the Basavaraj Bommai-led government in Karnataka, with the state contractors association on Wednesday stating that they will be writing another letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi in this regard.
Companies are innovating with tech tools to ensure that you spend less time at the cash counter.
Several Indian banks have alerted their customers not to download apps from any source other than official app stores. Banking customers are being targeted by a new type of mobile banking malware campaign using SOVA Android Trojan. This malware captures the credentials when users log onto their net-banking apps and access bank accounts. The new version of SOVA appears to be targeting more than 200 mobile applications, including banking apps and crypto wallets.
The Chhattisgarh government has decided to set up model fair-price shops (FPS) in each district and encourage owners to act as banking correspondents for providing financial services. The state has around 12,300 fair-price shops across 33 districts. The state government is, however, encouraging FPS owners to provide a host of services besides acting as a banking correspondent.
Indian start-ups raised issues, such as blockages in international wire transfers, disruptions due to threshold limits on withdrawals, lack of communication from US agencies, and the need for preferential access to credit, in a meeting with the government over the fallout of Silicon Valley Bank's collapse. Rajeev Chandrasekhar, minister of state for electronics and information technology, held a virtual meeting with over 450 members from start-ups, venture capitalists, and investors who have been directly affected by the closure of SVB. He assured them that the IT ministry would put together a list of suggestions and give it to the finance minister on behalf of start-ups.
Qatar has been given two weeks to provide a report to FIFA on how it has improved working conditions for labourers in the 2022 World Cup host nation.
'The finance minister said, the MSME is the backbone of the economy. My question is, what have you done for the sector?'
Small queues were witnessed at some bank branches on Tuesday for the exchange of Rs 2,000 notes against smaller denominations as part of the withdrawal exercise. As per the RBI guidelines issued on Friday, the exchange of Rs 2,000 facility is available from Tuesday. A person can exchange up to a limit of Rs 20,000 at a time without filling any form or requisition slip.
Various indicators make it amply clear that there are grave challenges facing the new government of Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, reports Indivjal Dhasmana.
The Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) on March 17 had announced that State Bank of India (SBI) would extend a term loan of $1 billion to Sri Lanka, fully guaranteed by the Indian government, and this was part of India's financial aid to the troubled island nation. Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) spokesperson Arindam Bagchi was quoted saying by news agency PTI that the loan would be used for importing food, medicines, and other essential items. "India has always stood with the people of Sri Lanka and we will continue to extend all possible support at this juncture.
Our country needs massive investment in access of Rs 50 lakh crore in infrastructure to increase growth of GDP and integrate the nation with a network of roads, airports, railways, inland water and to provide good quality services to the people: FM
'The Digital Rupee will be equal to the Indian rupee in value and backed by the full faith and credit of the RBI/Indian government.'
Thousands of demonstrators have hit the streets since April 9, as the government ran out of money for vital imports; prices of essential commodities have skyrocketed and there are acute shortages in fuel, medicines and electricity supply.
In a bid to ensure security of card data, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has enhanced the scope of tokenisation and permitted card issuers to act as token service providers (TSP). Under tokenisation services, a unique alternate code is generated to facilitate transactions through cards. The RBI on Tuesday extended the device-based tokenisation to card-on-file tokenisation (CoFT) services, a move that will bar the merchants from storing actual card data. Card-on-file refers to card information stored by payment gateway and merchants to process future transactions.
The RTGS for high-value transactions will remain unavailable for 14 hours from midnight of Saturday due technical upgrade to further improve the disaster recovery time of the system, the RBI said in a statement. The popular National Electronic Funds Transfer or NEFT for fund transfers of up to Rs 2 lakh will continue to be operational as usual during this period.
15 Australian players offered AUD$700,000 to play in UAE League
Union finance secretary T V Somanathan recently said the Centre had saved Rs 10,000 crore in FY22 on interest payments after adopting new accounting mechanisms for central government agencies and centrally sponsored schemes (CSS) for state governments. Speaking at an event, Somanathan said due to these, there was an unspent balance of Rs 1.2 trillion with state agencies from CSS as on March 31, 2022. This means this amount will be reduced from the Centre's borrowing for now and it can be considered a short-term saving for the exchequer.
A Mohali court on Friday sent to 14-day judicial custody sacked Punjab minister Vijay Singla, who said he worked with 'utmost sincerity', has full faith in his party and will come out clean of corruption charges.
Apart from mobile apps, 611 websites with the .in domain in the country were also found to be vulnerable, the Trend Micro survey reveals.
Uber on Thursday said it is now showing trip destination to drivers before they decide to accept a ride to enable them to make informed choices as the ride-hailing app announced a host of new measures promising to improve platform experience for drivers as well as riders. Upfront destination feature is already live across 20 cities and will be expanded to all others, Uber said in a statement. The move assumes significance as the government recently warned cab aggregators, including Ola and Uber, of strict action unless they improve their systems and redress mounting consumer complaints.
Former US President Donald Trump is expected to appear before a specially secured Manhattan courthouse on Tuesday to be arraigned on history-making criminal charges related to paying hush money to a porn star during his 2016 presidential campaign.
The tax authorities may tell banks and crypto exchanges to report transactions of virtual digital assets (VDAs) as the government begins taxing gains from cryptocurrencies and non-fungible tokens from April 1. So far, the tax department has relied on voluntary disclosures on transactions of VDAs. Once implemented, the sale and purchase of digital assets will reflect in the Annual Information Statement (AIS). The AIS contains details of at least 46 of the financial transactions done by a taxpayer in a financial year.
Jet Airways, which is yet to resume operations under its new owner, will reduce salaries for various staff and send many employees on leave without pay, amid uncertainty over resumption of its operations. The measures, which will be effective from December 1, were revealed hours after the winning bidder Jalan-Kalrock Consortium (JKC) said it might take "difficult" near-term decisions to manage cashflows. The once-storied airline shuttered operations in April 2019 and JKC's resolution plan was approved under the insolvency process by the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) in June last year.
The government on Friday came out with Foreign Trade Policy (FTP) 2023 which seeks to boost the country's exports to $2 trillion by 2030 by shifting from incentives to remission and entitlement based regime. Unlike the practice of announcing 5-year FTP, the latest policy has no end date and will be updated as and when needed, said Director General of Foreign Trade (DGFT) Santosh Sarangi while briefing media about FTP 2023. Earlier, Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal unveiled FTP 2023 which will come into effect from April 1, 2023.
The Indian financial system's asset quality improved despite the pandemic, but it could be due to special dispensations by the regulator, and banks would likely see increased stress on their books once the schemes expire. According to the annual trend and progress report of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) released on Tuesday, the data available for this financial year so far indicate that banks' bad debts have moderated while provision coverage ratios (PCRs), capital buffers as well as profitability indicators have improved relative to pre-pandemic levels.
They will not be followed by analysts and no fund manager can buy such small companies with low trading liquidity.
Large companies, those that are talked about in the media and tracked on social media, have already been discovered. They won't lead to extraordinary gains, Debashish Basu points out.
The doctors' bodies said that the two sides reached consensus during talks with the state government agreeing to keep private hospitals that have not availed land at subsidised rates or other benefits from it outside the ambit of the proposed law.
With this, India joins 60 other countries that collect PNR details of international passengers.
A Europe-like cyber security defence alliance is the need of the hour, say banking technology experts.
Taking lessons from that, I would think seamless digital payments is something you have to clearly have a roadmap for, the FM said.
'Make every trip feel like an escape' says the Uber website. Ironically, it remains to be seen how the company can get away from this controversy.
The last few months have been hard on digital wallets which had a short-lived dream run post-demonetisation.
The latest fraud is a failure of management supervision and accountability, as no bad debt was generated and no cash was involved
The CBI has filed a fresh case against absconding diamantaire Mehul Choksi, wanted along with his nephew Nirav Modi in a loan fraud case of Rs 13,500 crore, for allegedly inflating the value of diamonds and jewellery pledged to get Rs 25 crore loan from IFCI, officials said on Monday. The CBI has booked Mehul Choksi, his company Gitanjali Gems and valuers Surajmal Lallu Bhai and Co, Narendra Jhaveri, Pradip C Shah and Shrenik Shah, they said. The central agency has acted on a complaint from Industrial Finance Corporation of India (IFCI) Ltd alleging that Choksi had approached it in 2016 seeking Rs 25 crore working capital loan for which he had pledged shares and gold and diamond jewellery.
A CBTR pertains to transfer of funds through various channels abroad.
Report holds Hitachi responsible for debit card data theft. When the data theft came to light, Hitachi had denied that its systems were compromised.
'The government should immediately enact an Act to make caste discrimination a criminal offence and lay down a procedure similar to that of the Anti-Ragging Act.' 'Ragging has nearly been eliminated because it is treated as a criminal offence.' 'Similar procedure should be used in case of caste discrimination.'
In a business friendly move, the Reserve Bank of India on Friday said that the Real Time Gross Settlement (RTGS) system, used for large value transactions, will be made available round-the-clock in the next few days. In December 2019, the National Electronic Funds Transfer (NEFT) system was made available on a 24x7x365 basis. Currently, RTGS is available for customers from 7.00 am to 6.00 pm on all working days of a week, except second and fourth Saturdays of every month.
Jaishankar also made it clear that it is in nobody's interest to see a country get into severe economic difficulties, and that too a neighbour.
Mihir Tanna, Associate Director, S K Patodia & Associates, answers your tax queries.