The decision to impose 0.5 per cent cess will translate into a tax of 50 paise only on every Rs 100 worth of taxable services.
Instead of mechanically consolidating all labour laws into one, provisions of all labour laws should be relooked in terms of their substance. The irrelevant and archaic provisions have to be fixed, says Aparajita Gupta.
The Union Budget seems to have elicited a starkly opposite view from rural India compared to urbanites, says Mahesh Vyas.
While IDBI Bank's 140 million customers and 1800-odd branches will come in handy for LIC to hawk insurance, the bank can use LIC's massive agent network to sell its retail loans. But if it is run the same way it had been in the past and LIC is a proxy of the government, then it has no future, says Tamal Bandyopadhyay.
The first high-speed train between Delhi and Agra with a speed of 160 km per hour is expected to run on November 10 as Kapurthala Rail Coach Factory is all set to roll out the first rake of fourteen coaches of the train.
'MFs have a combined exposure of Rs 3.2 lakh crore to NBFCs, out of which Rs 1.1 lakh crore matures by September 2019.'
Normal life in Karnataka is likely to be affected on Saturday as pro-Kannada outfits have called for a statewide dawn-to-dusk bandh to protest Tamil Nadu's opposition to Mekedatu drinking water project across the inter-state river Cauvery.
There is nothing wrong with government and RBI having conflicting opinions.
The country's apex exporters body Federation of Indian Export Organisations said that support extended by the minister for research and development activities and reduction of duties on capital goods will help in increasing competitiveness of Indian products in the global market.
Budget planners for now have been told to prepare with the assumption that GST will apply from April 1.
The first high speed train with a speed of 160 kilometer per hour will run on Delhi-Agra section in November this year as Kapurthala Rail Coach Factory (RCF) is all set to roll out first rake of fourteen coaches of the train.
A move to extend visas on arrival facility to 150 countries and make world heritage sites more tourist friendly has been welcomed.
Railway Budget will be presented on February 26.
What Saisuresh Sivaswamy learnt about the election from television and the newspapers. A must read column, folks!
According to a senior Planning Commission official, according to the new criteria evolved by members Abhijit Sen and Mihir Shah, henceforth BRGF amounts will be allocated on the basis of backward blocks and not just districts.
For example, railways, roads and highways, and shipping could form a section within the Budget as an omnibus transport sector
The Bharat Interface For Money app was launched on the iOS platform earlier this month. It is also available on the more popular Android platform. There have been over 17 million downloads of the BHIM app so far.
The govt hiked defence budget by 7.81 per cent over last year's Rs 2.74 lakh crore.
GST will also make our exports more competitive and also provide a level playing field to domestic industry to compete with imports, the President said.
The Rajya Sabha on Wednesday approved the biggest tax reform since Independence.
Ananthasubramanian, 55, started her career in 1982 at Bank of Baroda as a specialist officer in the planning stream.
Punjab National Bank is the second largest PSU bank, in which government holding is 58.87 per cent.
Housing sector to benefit from Budget.
Moving ahead with the economic reforms, the Cabinet tonight cleared the long-delayed proposal for raising FDI limit in defence to 49 per cent and fully opened up the railway infrastructure segment, like high-speed trains, for foreign investment.
Govt to introduce an hovercraft on the Yamuna river.
The Union finance ministry has asked field officers of the income tax department to not be adversarial to assessees, and to not send high-pitched demands without a proper basis.
The Bill could be referred to the Parliamentary Committee for scrutiny
While people have paid the price for the disruption it caused, now is the time to reap its benefits, says T N Ninan.
The government may delay Rs 14,000 crore (Rs 140 billion) fund infusion in the public sector banks in view of volatile market conditions.
The Japan International Cooperation Agency has submitted the final report on the feasibility study of the proposed high-speed rail system on the Mumbai-Ahmedabad route to the Railway Minister, estimating the ambitious project would cost Rs 98,805 crore.
REITs, a new investment avenue in India on the lines of one in developed markets like the US, UK, Japan.
PAN could be used by the probe agencies.
The idea behind advancing the Budget date is to ensure that the Finance Bill is passed before the start of the financial year, on April 1, so that all central government departments get their full allocations to work with right from the first day
Government to infuse funds in cash-strapped banks.
Industry bodies said the decisions will help attract much-needed capital, create jobs, encourage collaboration and benefit cash-starved small and medium enterprises.
This move to make it easier for funds to avail of tax exemptions.
Dismissing the criticism of his interim budget by Narendra Modi, Finance Minister P Chidambaram said, "I don't want to take the level of this debate to a Class 8 school boys' debate."
'The only good thing is people will not be required to maintain their medical bills and invest time in that.'
Jaitley's fiscal arithmetic, Crisil said, is "shaky", and the scope for fiscal slippage "remains high".