The Indian government has expressed its disagreement with the IMF staff's 'baseline' assumption that the 50 per cent US tariffs on its goods exports 'would remain in place indefinitely', based on which the staff pegged the country's GDP growth at 6.6 per cent this year, and pared its 2026-27 projection by 20 basis points to 6.2 per cent.
Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Tuesday asked fintech firms to focus on risk management at a time when criminals are using AI to mimic voices, clone identities and create lifelike videos to manipulate people.
In a bid to check generation of domestic black money, the government will soon issue a notification making quoting of PAN mandatory for all cash transactions beyond Rs 200,000.
In 2025 alone, at least 50 suicides linked to online gambling losses have been reported across India. According to FIRs, the victims were addicted to betting, largely driven by cricket, rummy and poker.
In a significant breakthrough, the Malerkotla Police apprehended two individuals for alleged involvement in espionage activities linked to a Pakistani official posted at the High Commission in New Delhi, said Punjab Director General of Police (DGP) on Sunday.
Non-banking entities such as fintech firms will have to tap into use cases beyond peer-to-peer (P2P) and peer-to-merchant (P2M) transactions to scale up the presence of the retail version of the central bank digital currency (CBDC), which is also known as the e, said industry players. These use cases will enable programmable transactions across domains, including the government's direct benefit transfer (DBT) schemes, with subsidies restricted to specific purposes such as food coupons, hospital bills, fertilisers, pesticides, and cross-border remittances.
In President Donald Trump's big priority bill, there is a proposal for a 5 percent excise tax on remittance transfers that would cover more than 40 million people, including those holding green cards and H1B visas.
The central government and the Reserve Bank of India have devised a country-specific plan towards implementation of overseas trade in rupee, people aware of the matter said. To start with, a small number of banks will be allowed to manage cross-border transactions in domestic currency with a particular country. "Small countries that are dollar-deficient have shown interest in doing trade in rupee.
'Many global investors have been overweight on dollar assets, so some diversification or hedging is naturally expected.'
In October 2024, Jindal Stainless challenged a Goods and Services Tax (GST) notice in the Delhi high court. It was about corporate guarantees issued to related parties by its former group company, Jindal Stainless (Hisar), before their merger in March 2023.
Strategic deals like the one involving the HDFC twins accounted for a bulk $126 billion of the overall quantum, while transactions involving private equity funds stood at $37 billion, the report by Deloitte, a consultancy firm, said. Despite global headwinds like rising interest rates and elevated inflation levels leading to increased margin pressures for companies, the firm expects the overall activity to remain "strong" in the ongoing 2023.
In the first such collaboration for India, the country's flagship payments platform, the Unified Payments Interface (UPI), and Singapore's PayNow payment system have launched a real-time cross-border payment linkage system. The linkage, which was launched by Prime Minister (PM) Narendra Modi and Singapore's PM Lee Hsien Loong on Tuesday, was kicked off by a live cross-border transaction between Reserve Bank of India Governor Shaktikanta Das and Monetary Authority of Singapore managing director Ravi Menon, using mobile phones.
'Listing of scaled Indian subsidiaries of multinational corporations as well as of Indian conglomerates continues to remain a key theme for IPOs in India.'
Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Tuesday said many countries have evinced interest for bilateral trade in the rupee after the RBI announced a mechanism recently. Speaking at Mindmine Summit 2022, she said this along with other steps taken by the government is towards full capital account convertibility. "It isn't the rouble-rupee which was in the old format. "Now this (bilateral rupee trade) formulation, which I am glad the RBI has come up at a time which was so critical," she said when asked if India is ready for capital account convertibility.
'The larger and more opaque this shadow economy becomes, especially online, the greater the risk to India's national security.'
India is expected to be the top recipient of remittances in 2023 as inflows increase 12.4 per cent to $125 billion, said a World Bank report on Tuesday. Mexico will come next by receiving $67 billion and China will follow it at $50 billion. The key drivers for remittance growth in 2023 are a tight labour market in the United States, high employment growth in Europe reflecting extensive leveraging of worker retention programs, and a dampening of inflation in high-income countries. India's growth in remittances is expected to halve to 12.4 per cent in 2023 from a historic peak of 24.4 per cent in 2022.
While six of them have been held from Punjab, five were nabbed from neighbouring Haryana, and one from Uttar Pradesh.
President Droupadi Murmu addressed the nation on the eve of Independence Day, praising the response to terrorism, highlighting achievements in defense self-reliance, and emphasizing unity and progress.
India witnessed a record-breaking surge in deal activity in February, with 226 M&A and private equity deals totaling $7.2 billion -- the highest monthly deal volume in the last three years, according to the Dealtracker report of Grant Thornton Bharat. "This represents a 67 per cent increase in volumes and a 5.4-fold increase in values compared to February 2024, while a 14 per cent increase over the previous month," it said.
Just as Gandhiji's spinning wheel became a symbol of resistance, Indian travellers today can turn their passports into instruments of peaceful protest, argues Harsh Roongta.
Indian Pharma majors are looking at different strategies to boost their global business.
Interview with Joint President & CFO, United Spirits Limited.
The Union Budget 2025-26, while promising a new framework for smoother mergers and acquisitions (M&As), has plugged a major loophole on carry-forward losses for a total of eight assessment years between amalgamating company and amalgamated company from the date of loss instead of date of the merger. For all mergers effected on or after April 1, 2025, the losses can be carried forward only for the residuary period (counting from the date of loss).
Those who consider the rupee as a proxy for virility have started thumping their chests and dreaming of dethroning the dollar from its coveted position, observes Tamal Bandyopadhyay.
Experts say the recent Rs 14,000-crore PNB fraud could have been avoided had there been an integration of PNB's CBS with its SWIFT system
Sean F Foley, global leader of KPMG Transfer Pricing Services, who has also been an APA tax administrator for the American government agency, tells Business Standard companies are optimistic but cautious about the development.
European Union (EU) companies operating in India want New Delhi to streamline or remove non-tariff barriers such as Quality Control Orders (QCOs), complex Customs procedures; simplify labelling, testing, and import procedures; and facilitate cross-border digital transactions without data localisation constraints. These are results of a Business Sentiment Survey, 2025 conducted by the Federation of European Business in India (FEBI) ahead of resumption of negotiations for a free trade agreement (FTA) between both the sides scheduled to be concluded by year-end.
SC dismisses review petition; govt waits for Finance Bill passage.
Delhi's appeasement strategy may now translate as more mega arms deals with the US, generating substantial business and job creation in the American economy. Make no mistake, Americans will use it to pressure India, predicts Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar.
With Lok Sabha approving the Finance Bill that amends law to retrospectively tax cross-border transactions dating back to April 1, 1962, Vodafone faces a tax demand of Rs 11,000 crore (Rs 110 billion) plus interest and a penalty on its 2007 acquisition of Hutchison Whampoa Ltd's Indian operations.
Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee on Wednesday said the proposed Direct Taxes Code would give an edge to the country while dealing with international taxation issues.
'There is no independently verified imagery or battlefield evidence to support Pakistan's claim.'
Amid the threat of yoga guru Baba Ramdev to go on a hunger strike on the issue of black money from June 4, the government on Wednesday said the series of steps taken by it to unearth unaccounted-for wealth have started yielding results.
Reinterpreting long-established tax treaty provisions by the tax authorities creates confusion and has to be avoided as it affects investment into India.
Higher discounts on crude oil offered by the United Arab Emirates (UAE) to wean India away from Russian crude may soon see Indian refiners ramping up purchases from the Gulf nation, officials at multiple refiners said. They also pointed to the recent agreement on trade settlement in national currencies signed between India and the UAE as a reason for this. "While discussions are underway, the UAE has offered discounts on crude, which will be more than that of the current level of Russian discounts.
'The country is a good test bed for enterprise adoption, but to scale rapidly, companies will need to look outside the country for customers.'
'The impact of CBDC on deposits and deposit insurance is largely unknown.'
Crypto assets should not be granted official currency or legal tender status, the much-awaited synthesis paper by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and Financial Stability Board (FSB) has said ahead of the G20 leadership summit under India's presidency. However, the report has argued against a blanket ban on activities linked to crypto assets, explaining that such a move can be costly as well as technically demanding to enforce. Central banks should avoid holding crypto assets in their official reserve as they pose a risk to monetary and global financial stability, according to the synthesis paper.
India will soon meet Iraq and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) to seek a definitive rate of discount on crude oil similar to what Russia has provided so far, sources said. Multiple officials and industry executives said Iraq, which is India's biggest oil supplier, wants to discuss the level of discounts expected by Indian refiners. India's focus on snapping up ever-increasing volumes of Russian crude oil has led to a corresponding decline in imports from the Middle East. Flows from Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE have suffered as a result.
