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Times of India February 13, 2019 Pankaj Doval  New Delhi: The government has asked struggling state-owned telco BSNL to look at all options, from a revival plan to disinvestment and even closure, as it looks to tackle the bleeding at India's largest loss-making PSU. The direction to the company - which had accumulated losses of Rs 31,287 crore at the end of 2017-18 - was given following a meeting of top BSNL officials with telecom secretary Aruna Sundararajan, sources told TOI. BSNL chairman Anupam Shrivastava made a presentation to the telecom secretary, where he gave details about the company's financial health, its accumulated losses, the impact on business following the entry of Reliance Jio, and possible voluntary retirement scheme (VRS) and early retirement plans for employees. Interestingly, the government - while looking at revival options - also asked the company about an analysis if its business was shut down. BSNL was asked to submit "comp

The Economics Times February 13, 2019 Alnoor Peermohamed Bengaluru: The Central Bureau of Direct Taxes (CBDT) is unlikely to allow startups that have raised money from ‘accredited investors’ to be exempt from Section 56(2)(viib) of the IT Act, one of the key demands of angel groups and prominent investors in the ongoing feud between the government and the industry. Investors, in their recent meetings with the departments concerned, had suggested that they should be allowed to self-declare as accredited investors, provided the investor has an income above Rs 50 lakh in the  previous financial year and over Rs 2 crore of net worth. “They (CBDT) are not comfortable with the current proposal of investors self-declaring that they’re accredited investors. While investors have now proposed that Sebi take the responsibility of verifying investors, the understanding of CBDT is that this could be done at a later date as well,” said a person close to the development. On F

The Economics Times February 13, 2019 Pratik Bhakta Bengaluru: The Reserve Bank of India’s intention to regulate payment gateway service providers has received a mixed response  from industry players, with some welcoming the move and others cautioning that close regulatory scrutiny may cause operational challenges and stifle innovation. The central bank had announced last week that it will release a white paper for discussion and consult companies before introducing regulations. Vishwas Patel, founder of CCAvenue Payment gateway, believes the sector doesn’t need more regulations as it already has all the safety networks in place to ensure customer money is protected. “There is a fully functional nodal bank account system as mandated by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI); also all gateway entities are PCIDSS certified ensuring security. What more will the regulator do with the fresh guidelines,” he told ET. Patel is also the chairman of industry body Payments Council of

The Financial Express February 13, 2019 The CAG scrutinised only 22% of the 78,647 assessments made during this period, and said ITD needed to internally audit the remaining assessments to pin down reasons for errors. Further, CAG found that out of 923 real estate transactions involving more than Rs 1 crore, ITD failed to bring 142 transactions into the tax net. In its report tabled in Parliament on Tuesday, the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) found that the income tax department (ITD) caused a loss of Rs 6,093 crore to the exchequer due to 1,183 mistakes made in assessing the income-tax returns (ITRs) of real estate companies between financial years 2013-14 and 2016-17. The CAG scrutinised only 22% of the 78,647 assessments made during this period, and said ITD needed to internally audit the remaining assessments to pin down reasons for errors. Further, CAG found that out of 923 real estate transactions involving more than Rs 1 crore, ITD failed to bring 142 tran

The Economics Times February 12, 2019 Atmadip Ray Kolkata: State-run Allahabad Bank has sought Reserve Bank of India’s permission to transfer the bad loans in its Hong Kong branch into the Indian balance sheet even as it is looking to sell down the good assets to other lenders. The transfer and offloading of assets is  necessary as the lender is in the process of winding up its lone overseas branch in Hong Kong. The transfer of NPAs is taking more time than expected as this needs the regulator’s approval. The bank is, by all probability, set to miss  the March deadline set by the government for winding up the branch. The government owns 83% in the bank. “We are in talks with RBI to finalise the mechanism (for transfer of bad loans). This will happen only after March,” managing director SS Mallikarjuna Rao said. The branch has about Rs 4700 crore of standard loans while the bad loan amounted to Rs 30-40 crore. Hong Kong does not have any asset reconstruction mechanism

The Economics Times February 13, 2019 Ayan Pramanik     BENGALURU: The Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI) has issued a notice to technology major IBM, asking it to pay Rs 620 crore in unpaid customs duties for equipment imported into the country, three people familiar with the development told ET.  The DRI — which began investigating the suspected under-invoicing of equipment in 2014 — sent notices to IBM last week, the people said.  The agency has also issued two additional notices, two of the people said, which could take the total dues to Rs 900 crore. ET could not independently verify this claim.  The over-200-page notice for Rs 620 crore details what the DRI terms as omissions by the American company. IBM has been told that it has not been paying customs duty on the operating software sold along with the hardware, as well as duty on the warranty for this equipment. It has also been charged with not paying custom . duty on the operating software sold alon

The Hindu Business Line February 12, 2019 The government is making another attempt to divest its stake in Air India by selling 98 per cent of its stake in Air India Air Transport Services Ltd (AIASTL), the subsidiary which does grounding handling work. The remaining 2 per cent stake in the company can be taken by the employees, but if they choose not to then the entire 100 per cent stake will be sold to a private entity. On Tuesday, the Preliminary Information Memorandum (PIM) for the sale was issued to interested parties, thereby kick- starting the divestment process. The government has set March 26 as the last date for submission of interest from interested parties and intimating the qualified bidders on April 9. A clearer picture on when the Air India subsidiary will be sold will known by April 9 when those who are qualified for bidding will be asked to put in financial bids. The timelinefor submitting financial bids for the subsidiary and by when the government is expect

 The Indian Express   February 13, 2019 The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has imposed monetary penalty on seven banks for non-compliance with various directions issued by the RBI, including monitoring of end use of funds. The banks are: Allahabad Bank (Rs 1.5 crore), Andhra Bank (Rs 1 crore), Bank of Maharashtra (Rs 1.5 crore), Indian Overseas Bank (Rs 1.5 crore), HDFC Bank (Rs 20 lakh), IDBI Bank (Rs 20 lakh) and Kotak Mahindra Bank (Rs 20 lakh). According to the RBI, these penalties have been imposed in exercise of powers vested in the Reserve Bank under the provisions of Section 47A(1)(c) read with Section 46(4)(i) of the Banking Regulation Act, 1949, taking into account failure of the above banks to adhere to the directions issued by the RBI. “This action is based on deficiencies in regulatory compliance and is not intended to pronounce upon the validity of any transaction or agreement entered into by the banks with their customers,” the RBI said. With this, the RBI ha

DNA February 13, 2019 Balwant Jain This Interim Budget has proposed various provisions that are beneficial for property owners. Let us discuss what these are and their impact.  Enhancement for limit on TDS on rent The finance minister has proposed to enhance the threshold limit for receipt of rental income without deduction of tax at source (TDS) on such income. Presently, a lessee is required to deduct tax at source if the annual rent in respect of a property exceeds Rs 1.80 lakh in a year. Now property owners will be able to get the rent without deduction of TDS as long as the rent does not exceed Rs 2.40 lakh in a year.  The lessee, other than Hindu Undivided Family (HUF) and individuals, have to deduct tax at source in all such cases where the rental exceed specified limits. An individual or HUF also has to deduct tax from rent in case the annual rental exceeds the threshold limit, in case they are engaged in business and their accounts were required to be audited u

The Hindu Business Line February 12, 2019 Poor show by the manufacturing sector, pulled down factory output growth to 2.4 per cent in December 2018, from  7.3 per cent in the same month in the previous year. However, the  IIP print was higher than 0.47 per cent growth recorded in November 2018. For the April-December period, the Index of Industrial Production (IIP) grew 4.6 per cent, higher than 3.7 per cent in the same period last year, official data released on Tuesday showed. Manufacturing, which has 77.6 per cent weightage in the IIP, saw a sharp slowdown in growth at 2.7 per cent in December 2018, lower than 8.7 per cent in the same month in the previous year. For the April-December 2018 period, manufacturing grew 4.7 per cent, higher than 3.8 per cent in same period in the previous year. Mining output saw contraction of 1 per cent in December 2018, as against growth of 1.2 per cent in the same month in the previous year. Electricity output saw robust growth at 7.3 per

Economics times February 12, 2019 Pratik Jain We started with complex multirate structure, with five tax slabs — 1%, 5%, 12%, 18%, and 28%. In November 2017, GST rate was slashed from 28% to 18% on over 170 items, followed by pruning of the list further in July  2018 and then in January of this year. While there are still few items (like cement), besides those contemplated initially, it’s only a matter  of time that rate on these items will also come down to 18%. Structurally, this should also pave the way for simplification of the rate structure, possibly from five slabs to possibly three over next couple of years, with likely convergence of 12% and 18% rate to a standard rate of 15% to 16%. Aviation Turbine Fuel (ATF) and Natural Gas may also come within the GST ambit and so can real estate, on which consensus seems to be emerging now. Relief for home buyers Real estate may be the only major sector where effective rate of tax has arguably gone up in GST. To addres

Bloomberg February 11, 2019 Andy Mukherjee It’s time India’s policy makers acknowledged the real problem facing the country’s shadow banks. What they are experiencing is no longer a vanilla liquidity shortage; the entire industry has crashed against a  wall of mistrust . On the other side of that wall are a clutch of wealthy property developers and their middle-class customers, as well as teeming multitudes of poor. Everyone is at risk. A crisis of confidence has made financiers’ own borrowing costs jump. The excess yield over government securities that the bond market is demanding from double A-rated firms is three standard deviations higher than the five-year average. The collapse of the highly rated infrastructure operator-financier IL&FS Group exposed the fault lines under Indian shadow banks’ impressive credit edifice. Non-bank lenders contributed  30 percent  of all advances in the economy over the past three years, with a fifth of their funding coming from co