India Inc is encouraged by a determined Budget.
Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Thursday said taxpayer base has almost doubled to 1.28 crore in four years of rollout of the historic tax reform and the enhanced GST mop up in the recent months should now be the "new normal". In a written message to tax officers on the fourth anniversary of GST rollout, she said implementing any reform of this scale in a large and diverse country like India can be highly challenging, but GST has brought about ease in taxpayer compliance and reduced common man's tax burden.
As the FM said, this is a Budget that lays the foundation for the next 25 years, observes Kumar Mangalam Birla.
7 key areas that the Budget must address to re-energise the infrastructure sector, suggests Vinayak Chatterjee.
It was one of the toughest times in history to announce a budget, says Harsh Goenka, chairman of RPG Enterprises.
The Congress on Monday strongly criticised the Union budget, saying Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman's speech was oblivious to the declining GDP and the budget was a case of "wrong diagnosis and prescription".
Kerala Finance Minister K N Balagopal has sought systemic changes in the GST structure, saying every state and consumer has lost because of its basically flawed architecture that has also led to rampant revenue leakage for the states. The Goods and Services Tax (GST) regime came into force in July 2017. Even though the framework is focused on having a one-nation-one-tax model, quite a few items, including petroleum products and liquor are still out of the GST purview.
The former umpire's son, Rudi Koertzen Jr, confirmed the tragic news.
'The BJP's real weapons are Hindutva, organisation and finance.'
Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Wednesday said India is "very close" to arriving at the specifics of the two-pillar taxation proposition at the G20 and is in the last stage of finalising the details. A total of 130 countries had in July agreed to a overhaul of global tax norms to ensure that multinationals pay taxes wherever they operate and at a minimum 15 per cent rate. The finance ministry had then said that some significant issues including share of profit allocation and scope of subject to tax rules are yet to be addressed and a 'consensus agreement' is expected by October after working out the technical details of the proposal.
FM Arun Jaitley says I-T dept's capacity to access information and apply technology driven analytical tools to expose evasion has been enhanced
'Three decades of intensive discussions, protocols and Confidence Building Measures were jettisoned one fine morning in 2020.' 'The primary lesson that has been learnt is that that there is no reliability about the Chinese.'
On reforms in pipeline, she said the government is for universal right to minimum wages and wants to remove regional disparity through a national floor wage.
India's engagement with China is "complex" and Chinese attempts to unilaterally alter the status quo along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in eastern Ladakh starting from April-May 2020 seriously disturbed the peace and tranquillity in border areas, the ministry of external affairs (MEA) said in a report on Monday.
Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Friday announced a slew of measures to boost economic growth and address distress in various sectors
Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Friday said the entire fiscal stimulus announced by the government would be funded by borrowings and revenues, and taxpayers will not be charged even a single penny. "I am not expecting the stimulus to be funded by taxpayers. Not a rupee from the taxpayer. The entire amount .... is shown as revenue and borrowings. "The government is borrowing to spend, but it is not taking from people," she said while interacting with journalists at the IWPC (Indian Women's Press Corps).
Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Thursday announced a new job creation scheme by giving subsidy to those establishments that make new hires. The subsidy would be to cover for retirement fund contributions by employees as well as employers for two years, she said. Employees contribution (12 per cent of wages) and employer's contribution (12 per cent of wages) totalling 24 per cent of wages would be given to establishments for two years, she said. Under the Aatmanirbhar Bharat Rozgar Yojana, every Employees' Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO)-registered establishment taking new employees would get this subsidy.
This will encompass the sale of Air India, a number of other privatisation initiatives, mergers, initial public offerings, the Centre's two exchange-traded funds, buybacks and offers-for-sale, and even monetisation of land assets.
The Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman undertook a day long review of the Customs activities at Nhava Sheva in Raigad district off the Mumbai coast on November 25.
Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Monday said the government has begun an exercise to assess the impact of the pandemic on the economy and likely contraction in GDP, even as she did not rule out the possibility of another stimulus to boost growth.
The Centre on Monday earmarked a separate Rs 2,217 crore for 42 urban centres to tackle air pollution and announced the much-awaited voluntary vehicle scrapping policy to phase out old and polluting vehicles, even as it shrunk the budgetary allocation for the environment ministry from the last fiscal by nearly eight percent. Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, in her budget speech for 2021-22, announced a total of Rs 2869.93 crore for the ministry, Rs 230 crore less than the last fiscal. Officials said the outlay has been lesser this time as the economy is recovering from the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Budget outlay for health and well being is Rs 2.23 lakh crore in 2021-22 as against BE of Rs 94,452 crore and marks an increase of 137 per cent," she said while presenting 2021-22 Budget in the Lok Sabha.
Sitharaman, who was giving her 2021-22 Budget Speech, started off by giving a special shout out to what the Indian team
Seven of the meetings will be held in late November or early December at the finance ministry, as is the norm.
What some of our leaders were up to on Thursday and Thursday.
She hit out strongly against the "misguided" Congress party for backing "fringe groups" at universities which have shown Maoist or separatist tendencies.
Stating that GST council meetings have become "almost toxic" with the erosion of trust between the Centre and states, West Bengal minister Amit Mitra on Wednesday urged Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman to consider a "course correction" to rebuild faith. In a letter to Sitharaman, the state's finance minister also claimed that the central government comes to GST council meetings with a "predetermined conclusion". Mitra on June 13 alleged that his voice was "muzzled" during the GST Council meeting on that day and his opposition to levy taxes on Covid essentials like vaccines, masks, PPE kits and anti-viral drug Remdesivir, was not heard.
'The financial situation of Tamil Nadu is much worse than it was in 2016.' 'The finance minister's is a horrendous job.' 'I am certainly not going to ask for it.'
Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Friday chaired a meeting with chiefs of public sector banks and assessed their readiness to tackle any possible disruptions due to the Omicron variant. In a tweet, the finance ministry said during the meeting with CMDs/MDs, held through virtual mode, the minister also reviewed various steps taken by PSBs in implementing pandemic-related measures initiated by the government and RBI.
Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Monday said technical glitches in the new income tax e-filing portal will be largely fixed in the next few days and that she has been constantly reminding Infosys about the issue. "I have been reminding Infosys (the vendor which developed the new portal) constantly, and (Infosys head) Nandan Nilekani has been messaging me with assurances that next couple of days they will sort out majority of problems," she said. To a large extent, the system is far better than what it was in June but still some issues are there, she said.
'I'm pitching India for the strengths we offer, including the English language, engineers, doctors, nurses, professionals, innovative talent of startups.'
Inmates operate the FM radio stations, make announcements on the jail's time table, play patriotic, devotional and folk songs and music for fellow prisoners.
The talks took place in a beach resort in Benaulim on the sidelines of a meeting of the Council of Foreign Ministers of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation.
Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Tuesday said monetisation of Central Public Sector Enterprises (CPSE) assets is based on the principle of value creation for the government and investors and would bring about a paradigm shift in infrastructure augmentation and maintenance. Chairing the National Workshop with the states/UTs on Asset Monetisation organised by Niti Aayog, the minister sought the collaboration of states for the holistic development of infrastructure. She said India can become a $5 trillion economy, while striking the right balance between fiscal imperatives and socio-economic welfare, through active collaboration between the public and private sector.
'Pleasure to meet FM Sergey Lavrov, this time in person. Excellent talks that reflect our Special and Privileged Strategic Partnership. Value our exchanges on the international situation,' Jaishankar tweeted after talks with his Russian counterpart on the sidelines of the SCO meeting.
Pakistan will not engage with India 'until and unless they lift the siege' in Kashmir, it said.
She said the grant does not cover the actual cost of vaccine and distribution expenses, which will be made separately as and when the vaccine is available.
Sitharaman does away with loans from National Small Savings Fund to Food Corporation of India.
The FM said there has been a manifold increase in digital payments in the recent past.
Referring to visible indicators of green shoots, the finance minister said the forex reserve is at an all time high and the stock market is upbeat.
