All investors should ideally have a 10 to 15 per cent allocation to gold. Whether they invest in gold ETFs or SGBs should depend on their investment horizon.
Exporters on Thursday demanded fiscal incentives, tweaking in customs duties on certain products and credit at affordable rates in the forthcoming Budget to boost exports and create jobs. In a pre-budget virtual meeting with Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, the Federation of Indian Export Organisations (FIEO) said the depreciation of the rupee against the US dollar is affecting exports' competitiveness and the sector requires more support. "Creation of employment is the biggest challenge faced by the country...We would urge the government to provide fiscal support to units which provide additional employment in the export sector," the exporter's body said.
For every rupee in the government coffer, 58 paise will come from direct and indirect taxes, 34 paise from borrowings and other liabilities, six paise from non-tax revenue like disinvestment and two paise from non-debt capital receipts, according to the Budget documents for 2023-24.
In another step against smoking, the government has reduced by 50 per cent the duty free allowance of cigarettes to 100 sticks and 25 cigars in airports. The decision comes barely a day after Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley proposed 'sin tax' and announced increase in excise duty on cigarettes in the range of 11 to 72 per cent.
The DTH industry has to pay entertainment tax to state governments and service tax to the central government.
Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman presents her fourth Budget in Lok Sabha on Tuesday.
The move will primarily impact luxury car companies like Mercedes Benz, BMW, Audi and Volvo and bike brands like Triumph and Harley Davidson.
The auto major is not just looking at domestic sales, but also planning to ramp up exports to key markets from here, like the Middle East, North Africa and Australia.
'Today, let us reaffirm our commitment to strive to realise Gandhiji's dreams. His watchwords, truth and nonviolence, will continue to remain relevant for the whole world. He also taught us that rights and duties are but the two sides of the coin - indeed, the true source of rights is duty. Today we recall his lessons in compassion too - compassion not only for our human neighbours but also for our other neighbours, namely, flora and fauna, rivers and mountains.'
The Centre is unlikely to offer new direct tax incentives for units operating in special economic zones (SEZs) and may instead allow the grandfathering of previous exemptions that such units were entitled to, according to proposed amendments to the SEZ Act, 2005, people aware of the matter said. The amendments, proposed by the commerce department, will soon be considered by the Cabinet for approval. This represents a departure from the department's earlier plan to introduce these changes through the Development Enterprises and Services Hubs (DESH) Bill, 2023, which faced strong criticism from the ministry of finance.
Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal has visited the manufacturing facility of US-based electric vehicle major Tesla at Fremont, California and said that the company would be doubling its auto components imports from India. The minister is in the US on a four-day visit. The world's largest electric car producer Tesla Inc's chief Elon Musk met Prime Minister Narendra Modi in June in New York and after the meeting Musk had said that he planned to visit India in 2024.
'Our attempt to honour the taxpayer has been since 2014 and more actively since 2019-2020 onwards.'
The California walnuts shipped from the US to India have seen a sharp uptick with imports more than doubling from September to November against the same period last year. This comes after New Delhi removed its retaliatory customs tariffs on the key dry fruit. Two days ahead of US President Joe Biden's visit to New Delhi to attend the G20 Summit on September 9-10, India dropped additional customs duties on about half a dozen US goods that were imposed in 2019 in response to America raising tariffs on certain steel and aluminum products coming from India.
The government has revised gold import data, bringing down numbers for November by $5 billion to $9.84 billion, possibly to rectify double accounting of inbound shipments. According to revised data of the commerce ministry arm Directorate General of Commercial Intelligence and Statistics (DGCIS), gold import numbers have been slashed since April 2024, revealing excess imports of about $11.7 billion during the first eight months of 2024-25.
For every rupee in the government coffer, the biggest pie of 63 paise will come from direct and indirect taxes, according to the Union Budget 2024-25 documents.
Countries negotiating free trade agreements (FTAs) need to keep in mind eight "myths" which surround these pacts, like they lead to accelerated increase in exports and promote domestic manufacturing, according to a report by think-tank GTRI. The report by Global Trade Research Initiative (GTRI) claims to dispel these 'myths', including that FTAs weaken the WTO (World Trade Organisation), countries are rushing to do FTAs, and these pacts promote investment and lower prices. It is "erroneously" believed that most world trade happens through the FTA route, but in reality, it is less than 20 per cent, said the report titled 'FTAs: Fabulous, Futile, or Flawed?'.
Mumbai, infamous for its voter apathy, stepped out to exercise its franchise on Wednesday.
Since the last nine years, gold investors have made money each year, while gains in silver have been consistent only in the last five years.
'We participate in the design/development of components and systems for electric vehicles, internal combustion engines, and hybrid vehicles.'
Union Budget 2014-15 is positive for metals and mining companies.
'There can be no dispute over the adverse impact such a policy will surely have on India's manufacturing competitiveness,' notes A K Bhattacharya.
Automobile dealers' body FADA said the Budget lacked immediate demand boosters for the automobile industry.
'Developers are into profit-making. And there's not too much money in the affordable segment.' 'So, they don't do affordable housing.'
As much as Rs 8,000 crore worth of mobile phones in this segment - out of a total of Rs 15,000 crore - come into the country through the grey market. The government imposed the duty on these phones primarily to encourage domestic production but the strategy has failed as the bulk of high end mobile phones are currently imported.
Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman also said that the government proposes to increase the benefit of carrying forward losses for startups to 10 years.
'I found it unbelievable that L&T said 45,000 jobs were waiting to be filled because of unavailability of suitable skillsets.' 'So, when the Opposition sweepingly says there are no jobs, I'm sorry... I'm not saying it's raining jobs, but there are jobs. The (skill) gap has to be bridged.'
'The private sector believes that some enablers in labour-intensive sectors like apparel, toys, tourism, and media retail, can unlock a lot of jobs.'
Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Tuesday announced income tax relief for the middle class, a Rs 2 lakh crore outlay for job creation schemes over the next five years and a spending splurge for states run by her party's new coalition partners as she unveiled the Modi 3.0 government's first budget after the general elections.
India and Australia would now implement the free trade agreement on a mutually agreed date as the Australian Parliament on Tuesday approved the pact between the two countries. "BREAKING: Our Free Trade Agreement with India has passed through parliament," Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said in a tweet. The India-Australia Economic Cooperation and Trade Agreement (AI-ECTA) needed ratification by the Australian parliament before its implementation.
Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, along with her team of bureaucrats, delved into the fine print of the 2024-25 Budget documents in a press conference, detailing the government's road map on bringing down the debt-to-GDP ratio and bold tax measures.
More than 50 per cent of SIP accounts come from semi-urban and rural areas.
The government has slashed by up to 20 per cent the supplies of cheaper domestically produced natural gas to city retailers -- a move that may result in Rs 4-6 per kg hike in the price of CNG sold to automobiles, unless excise duty on the fuel is cut, sources said. Natural gas pumped from below the ground and from under the seabed from sites ranging from the Arabian Sea to Bay of Bengal within India is the raw material that is turned into CNG for sale to automobiles and piped cooking gas to households.
Metal sector is not too happy from Budget announcements for the sector
The talks for a free trade agreement (FTA) between India and Canada may have taken a pause but will resume once the political row between the two countries is resolved as the pact has economic benefits for both the nations, trade experts and exporters said on Friday. However, they said that India may not hurry for the trade agreement as 60 per cent of New Delhi's exports are already entering Canada at zero duty. Earlier this month, India and Canada paused the negotiations for the agreement due to political reasons.
Levy in India one of the highest in the world; finance minister urges banks to tell customers not to invest in the metal.
If Tesla comes in, India's position as a manufacturing hub will rise many notches, as it will become only the second country, after China, to have both Apple as well as Tesla.
Any revision in gold import duty is unlikely to take place before the Budget, says finance ministry official.
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.
The government on Thursday imposed import restrictions on laptops, tablets, all-in-one personal computers, ultra small form factor computers, and servers with immediate effect. The Directorate General of Foreign Trade (DGFT) in a notification said exemption from import licensing is provided up to 20 items per consignment for R&D, testing, benchmarking and evaluation, repair and return and product development purposes.
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