Setting at rest speculation about the possibility of tax cuts to boost growth, the Planning Commission Deputy Chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia on Tuesday said the government will not change the tax structure during the current fiscal, ending March 31.
The government today expanded the three-member Satyam board to six to include S Balakrishnan of Life Insurance Corporation, Tarun Das, chief mentor of the Confederation of Indian Industry and T N Manoharan, former president of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India.
CII believes there is a need to immediately examine the loopholes in regulation, accounting, audit and governance that allowed such lapses to occur and address them with urgency. While the occurrence of such events in a major company is a matter of deep regret, CII believes it would be inappropriate for this to be the basis of questioning of general governance standards in other companies.
An agreement to set up an Indian technology centre in Moscow to promote commercial use of Russian technology will be signed during Science and Technology Minister Kapil Sibal's visit beginning today.
For the 2009-10 fiscal, Pranab said, he expects the economy to grow by 7.2 per cent.
The data centre will act as a disaster recovery platform.
The company would focus only on expanding its existing facilities at an investment of around Rs 600 crore (Rs 6 billion), said S Gopalakrishnan, chief executive officer and managing director.
A draft bill on the Unique Identity Project would be made public within the next one month, chairman of UIDAI Nandan Nilekani said on Tuesday. "We need an Act to govern a regulatory body like UIDAI. The draft of the Act will be put for public discussion in the next four weeks," he told reporters on the sidelines of a Confederation of Indian Industries function in New Delhi.
The income tax department has come out with a circular that redefines the term "charitable purpose", that is likely to bring associations like Confederation of Indian Industry or Ficci and Board of Control for Cricket in India, one of the world's richest sports bodies, outside the purview of exemptions. The circular, which was published on December 19, now says any entity that does business or trade in exchange for a fee or income cannot claim exemption from paying income tax
Ashok Soota has cited 4 challenges that India Inc is facing. He stressed on a robust risk management strategy for Indian companies. He also stated responding to changes in market environment, resolving legal and regulatory differences and encouraging leadership and accepting cultural diversity as other challenges. Highlighting the challenges faced by the India Inc, experts said globalisation is essential to pursue growth opportunities and leverage comparative advantage.
In order to be competitive, the companies should now add value to their services and innovate ways to become efficient. With the continuing onslaught of the global financial crisis, companies are turning to large-scale lay-offs to cut cost and tide over the crisis.
With the new government remaining committed to restructure airports, the Canadian companies are eyeing projects worth over Rs 5400 crore (Rs 54 billion) to make world-class airports in the country.
The four key risk areas India needs to focus on at the moment include economic security, energy security, agriculture and food security and national security, it adds. The WEC-CII report says many issues facing India in these four areas will require considerable long-term investment from both public and private sectors. 'Decision-makers in government and business will be forced to make trade-offs as to where spending and investments are allocated,' it said.
'There is no need for suspicion regarding the US-India civil nuclear agreement,' US Ambassador David C Mulford tells the Rediff Chat.
To address the supply crunch, CII has suggested leveraging the existing excess capacity in the Indian industry; rolling back import duty hike to look for alternative sources of imports; expanding credit to manufacturing units with quick loan sanctions, and one-time emergency waiver of non-performing asset regulations for three months.
The Confederation of All India Traders has approached Union Home Minister Amit Shah, Union Health Minister Harsh Vardhan, Delhi Lieutenant Governor Anil Baijal, and Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, and urged them to shut markets in Delhi.
The government needs to allocate more funds for basis amenities like primary education and healthcare in order to attain its inclusive growth target, noted economist and Nobel laureate Amartya Sen said on Wednesday. "Fear of wastage stops the government from spending too much on education and healthcare," Sen said, adding the overall economic growth cannot be enough in itself if these resources are not properly developed.
The Finance Commission (task force) had recommended an overall GST rate of 12 per cent 'but it is likely to be higher than that', revenue secretary Sunil Mitra said at a Confederation of Indian Industry seminar in New Delhi.
The centre of excellence, a non-profit joint venture between tobacco-to-hotels major ITC and the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), is working on a rating system for companies' corporate social responsibility (CSR) programmes. The first exercise of its kind in India, the idea is to incentivise CSR programmes to strengthen companies' ability to bargain for tax breaks and create a better image with consumers and stakeholders.
Southern states will soon sell non-prescription drugs in post offices.
The CII delegation includes many eminent names.
After a long debate with Planning Commission, Finance Minister P Chidambaram has finally agreed to consider funding infrastructure projects through the country's booming foreign exchange reserves that currently stand at about $170 billion.
The country has seen and upswing in demand for both affordable and the premium housing segments.
The CEOs on both sides, headed by Thomas d'Aquino, chief executive and president of Canadian Council of Chief Executives, and Tarun Das, president of Confederation of Indian Industries, submitted a 14-page report on September 2 to the two trade ministers in Canada and India for their considerations and follow-up actions.
The Confederation of Indian Industry has entered into an agreement with the Chinese city of Sheynag to promote long-term cooperation in the area of information technology.
The draft Environment Impact Assessment notification will throttle speedy implementation of projects\n
Apollo Hospitals and Fortis Healthcare are open to importing vaccines.
Days before the national biofuel policy is taken up by the Union Cabinet, the Confederation of Indian Industries has demanded incorporation of enough "flexibility in the biofuel blending mandate" based on the availability of such fuels.
The Federation of Indian Airlines, the group formed by various carriers, has appointed Amitabh Khosla from CII as Executive Director to head its secretariat and plans to have a Director General later.
Pointing out there is complete awareness of what needs to be done, who needs to do it and the urgency to get it done, Damodaran said the only thing missing is its execution.
"If the government is going to borrow from the market to fill the fiscal deficit, then they are going to suck up all the money available in the banks and we will be crowded out," the new CII president Venu Srinivasan told reporters in New Delhi. Pitching for monetisation of the budget deficit, he said, "It means printing notes. Which means you have the risk of increasing inflation but at the same time you will keep the economy afloat".
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