Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Monday said banks need to focus more on being customer-friendly so that the process of availing credit becomes more hassle-free for borrowers. However, the minister made it clear that banks do not have to be lenient on credit underwriting standards by taking any adverse risks on a proposal. At a meeting between industry representatives and the finance minister, a startup founder in the baking business suggested for credit to be available hassle-free, to which largest lender SBI's chairman Dinesh Kumar Khara said a startup's worries are more on the equity side and assured full support in lending if sufficient equity is on the table.
Chinese phone maker Xiaomi's India unit has been slapped with a Rs 653 crore notice for alleged evasion of import duty, as per an official statement. A show-cause notice has been slapped on Xiaomi India following recovery of documents during searches on its premises that indicated remittance of royalty and licence fee to US and Chinese firms under contractual obligations, the union finance ministry said on Wednesday. Replying to an email query, a Xiaomi spokesperson said, "At Xiaomi India, we give utmost importance to ensuring we comply with all Indian laws.
Faced with criticism for her latest Budget not doing enough for the poor, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Friday mocked Congress leader Rahul Gandhi's 2013 comment of poverty being a state of mind, and asked if this is the poverty she was supposed to address.
Defence minister Rajnath Singh virtually conducted the final breakthrough blast of the Sela tunnel in Arunachal Pradesh and flagged of a 20,000-km-long motorcycle expedition of the BRO on Thursday.
The Tamil Nadu government will constitute an 'economic advisory council' to the chief minister comprising Nobel laureates, former Reserve Bank of India governor and other economic experts from around the globe to advise the state on how to reverse the economic slowdown.
Congress leader Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury's 'rashtrapatni' remark snowballed into a major political row on Thursday with the Bharatiya Janata Party accusing the opposition party of insulting President Droupadi Murmu and demanding that Congress chief Sonia Gandhi should apologise to the nation.
India's services sector activity moderated further in January as new business rose at a noticeably slower rate amid the escalation of the pandemic, reintroduction of restrictions and inflationary pressures, a monthly survey said on Thursday. The seasonally adjusted India Services Business Activity Index fell to 51.5 in January, down from 55.5 in December, pointing to the slowest rate of expansion in the current six-month sequence of growth. For the sixth straight month, the services sector witnessed an expansion in output.
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'Modi had not discussed demonetization with me prior to his announcement on 8 November 2016. 'I learnt of it along with the rest of the country. 'I was not surprised when he did not discuss the issue with me prior to making the public announcement. 'It fitted in with his style of making dramatic announcements.' A fascinating excerpt from Pranab Mukherjee's The Presidential Years: 2012-2017.
The party leadership blamed two of its MLAs, Srinivas Gowda from Kolar and S R Srinivas from Gubbi, for betraying the party.
A member of the 1983 cricket World Cup-winning squad, Azad was suspended from the Bharatiya Janata Party for openly targeting the then Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley over alleged irregularities and corruption in the Delhi and District Cricket Association in December 2015. He joined the Congress in 2018.
The Supreme Court on Monday allowed Congress MP Karti Chidambaram, who is facing criminal cases that are being probed by the Enforcement Directorate and the Central Bureau of Investigation, to travel abroad.
Gold loan is currently the fastest-growing loan category (among the various types disbursed to individuals). On February 26, 2021, the outstanding loan against gold jewellery stood at Rs 56,596 crore. By February 25, 2022, it had risen to Rs 71,408 crore, a year-on-year growth of 26.2 per cent, according to the Reserve Bank of India's (RBI's) data. Several factors are driving the demand for gold loans.
Former Union minister Yashwant Sinha who joined Trinamool Congress on Saturday narrated how West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee had offered to go as a hostage in exchange for passengers of Air India's IC 814 that was hijacked by the militants over two decades ago.
A proposal in the Union Budget 2022-23 to raise excise duty on dirtier, unblended retail petrol and diesel has met with some resistance from the petroleum ministry. However, finance ministry officials say no such communication arguing against the levy of extra duty on diesel has been received from the oil ministry. Until there are discussions between the two departments, the proposal will not be tweaked in the Finance Bill. The Rs 2 per litre additional excise duty proposed on unblended fuels in the Finance Bill will result in a uniform hike of diesel prices across the country from October 1.
Modi, one of the tallest leaders of the Bharatiya Janata Party in Bihar, had been missing from action for quite some time and was conspicuous by his absence when Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman released the party's manifesto earlier in the day.
With days to go before the new tax regime around crypto assets kicks in, several investors are reportedly either booking profits, rejigging their portfolios or moving their crypto assets to their private wallets outside of India. Starting April, gains from trading in crypto and other virtual assets like non-fungible tokens (NFTs) will be taxed at a flat 30 per cent, as announced in the Union Budget. And, 1 per cent of tax will be deducted at source (TDS) on every transaction involving crypto and other virtual assets. The new tax regime also bars investors from offsetting losses from one crypto asset (such as Bitcoin) against gains from another (say, Ethereum).
Union ministers Nirmala Sitharaman and Piyush Goyal, Randeep Surjewala and Jairam Ramesh of the Congress and Shiv Sena's Sanjay Raut were among the 16 candidates elected to the Rajya Sabha from four states where polling was held on Friday after tussle over cross voting and alleged breach of election rules delayed the counting by around eight hours in Maharashtra and Haryana.
Here is the lowdown of the each state and parties.
The finance ministry has set up two committees of state finance ministers which would rework rate slabs, review GST exempt items and identify potential evasion sources. Four years after the roll out of the national Goods and Services Tax (GST), which replaced the complex indirect tax structure, the centre and states have started work on moving towards a "simpler rate structure in GST" by reviewing the current rate slabs, including special rates and merger of rate slabs. The Group of Ministers (GoM) on rate rationalisation would also review items under inverted duty structure to help minimise refund payout, and review the supply of goods and services exempt under GST with an objective to expand the tax base and eliminate breaking of input tax credit (ITC) chain.
Political temperatures were soaring in several states that could see close contests, with parties trying to keep their flock together and trading accusations of poaching of MLAs.
India's best player Yuki Bhambri is back in the squad and that changes the dynamics for the three-day rubber.
'... as has been happening in the last three weeks, then the foreign exchange reserves will not be comfortable to ensure that the rupee does not fall drastically.'
He was permanently absorbed into the ED cadre in 2014 and has headed some high-profile investigations into the 2G spectrum allocation case, the 2010 Commonwealth Games, the money laundering cases against former Union finance minister P Chidambaram and his son Karti Chidambaram, Andhra Pradesh chief minister Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy and former Jharkhand chief minister Madhu Koda, the Aircel Maxis and VVIP choppers case.
The all-powerful GST Council on Friday decided to charge food delivery platforms such as Swiggy and Zomato a tax even as it extended concessional tax rates on certain COVID-19 drugs by three months till December 31. The Council, which comprises the Union finance minister and her state counterparts, decided to continue keeping petrol and diesel out of the GST purview as subsuming the current excise duty and VAT into one national rate would impact revenues. Briefing reporters on the decisions taken by the Council at a meeting here, Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said GST has been exempted on muscular atrophy drugs like Zolgensma and Viltepso, which cost crores of rupees.
The Centre is looking to convene a meeting of the all-powerful Goods and Service Tax Council in early January. The meeting is likely to focus on rectifying the inverted duty structure for a few more items and will also serve as a platform for pre-Budget discussions between Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman and state finance ministers, Business Standard has learnt. "The current Winter Session of Parliament ends on December 23, followed by the Christmas-New Year period. "After that we would like to have a meeting of the GST Council, depending on whether there can be a quorum," a top government official said.
A State Bank of India (SBI)-led consortium that gave loans to fugitive businessman Vijay Mallya on Friday received Rs 5,824.5 crore in its accounts after shares of UBL, earlier attached under the anti-money laundering law, were sold recently, the ED said. Mallya is accused in a multiple banks loan default case of about Rs 9,000 crore. The disputes resolution tribunal (DRT) had sold these shares on June 23 after the Enforcement Directorate had transferred shares worth about Rs 6,624 crore of UBL to the SBI-led consortium on the directions of a special PMLA court that is hearing the case involving Mallya in Mumbai. These shares were attached under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) by the ED, a central probe agency.
Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Saturday also said that Rs 3.6 lakh crore have been approved for Jal Jeevan Mission, which seeks to provide Functional Household Tap Connection to every rural household by 2024.
The Indian banking system's latest record on wilful defaulters shows Rs 62,970 crore, or around 10 per cent increase, in the additional amount outstanding since the pandemic began. The total outstanding amount increased to Rs 6.85 trillion in June from Rs 6.22 trillion in December 2019, shows a Business Standard analysis of numbers from the TransUnion CIBIL database. India recorded its first case of Covid-19 in January 2020.The amount outstanding to wilful defaulters had touched a post-pandemic peak of Rs.7.6 trillion in December 2020 (or Rs 1.4 trillion more than pre-pandemic levels).
Heeding to demands made by several states, the GST Council on Friday put on hold a decision to hike the tax rate on textiles to 12 per cent and referred to a panel of state ministers to recommend rate by February, Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said. The panel, the highest decision-making body for indirect taxes, met under emergency provisions after states made a request for deferring the tax rate hike on textiles, from the current 5 per cent, to be effective from January 1, 2022. Currently, the tax rate on manmade fibre (MMF) is 18 per cent, MMF yarn 12 per cent, while fabrics are taxed at 5 per cent.
'To simply let the rupee depreciate to any level according to market forces will not be in the country's interests.'
The Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) has extended various tax returns filing deadlines till December 31 this year but it will continue to levy interest on delayed payments made after July 31, the original due date. Officials say tax payment has to be done through net banking, and the assessee doesn't need to use the e-filing portal, which has been facing glitches. So, taxpayers have to bear the interest payment liability of 1 per cent per month on the outstanding tax for those who filed a return after July 31.
AAP's presence in both states has complicated the contests for the BJP and its Congress rival.
Polling for 16 Rajya Sabha seats in four states will be held on Friday amid allegations of attempts at horse-trading by rival parties which have corralled their MLAs in hotels and scenic resorts, prompting the Election Commission to appoint special observers and order videography of the entire exercise.
Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman will on Monday meet chief ministers and state finance ministers to discuss measures to attract private investments to help boost the economy. Finance secretary T V Somanathan said the meeting comes in the backdrop of strong economic recovery post the two COVID waves, and the central government has made a big push in Capex. The focus of this interaction will be on state-level issues, opportunities and challenges, which will enable us to go to a higher trajectory of investment and growth, he said.
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.
While Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman reiterated her stand that the central government was committed to cooperative federalism, finance ministers of non-BJP ruled states such as Punjab and Kerala said she refused to give a categorical assurance that states will be paid compensation on time.
The resolution praised Prime Minister Narendra Modi's leadership and accused the opposition of 'opportunism' and a mindset of 'extreme hate'.
The 8.1 per cent interest rate was recommended by the Central Board of Trustees after its meeting in Guwahati under the chairmanship of Union Labour and Employment Minister Bhupendra Yadav, a labour ministry press statement said.
Acting on a specific input, the Raipur police apprehended the seer from a rented room near Bageshwar Dham, located around 25 km from Khajuraho town in MP, Raipur Superintendent of Police Prashant Agrawal said.
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