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Business Standard May 20, 2019 Pakistan  needs to launch an aggressive diplomatic effort to secure enough support to come out of the grey list or prevent itself from falling into the black list of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) next month, a senior government official has said. The official's remarks came after a 10-member Pakistani delegation attended a two-day meeting of the  Asia-Pacific Group  (APG) of the Paris-based global watchdog  FATF  in the southern Chinese city of  Guangzhou  where it defended Pakistan's efforts against money laundering and terror financing. The senior official, who participated in the APG meeting in  Guangzhou  last week, told the Dawn newspaper that the coming  FATF  Plenary and Working Group meetings in Orlando, Florida, scheduled for June 16-21, would be crucial for  Pakistan  to get rid of the grey list or falling into the black list and having serious economic repercussions. "The Orlando plenary will ac

LiveMint May 21, 2019 NEW DELHI:  Slowing tax collections may prompt India to cut its FY20 direct taxes target from the  ₹ 13.8 trillion estimated in the interim budget, necessitating a reworking of the contours of the full budget to be presented after the elections. The shortfall in  direct tax receipts  in the just-concluded FY19 makes projections for the current fiscal ambitious, a person with direct knowledge of tax receipts said on condition of anonymity. The revenue department collected close to  ₹ 11.2 trillion in FY19 by way of taxes on personal and corporate income, which is an improvement of 12% over what was collected in the year before. The achievement still fell short of the  ₹ 12 trillion the finance ministry had hoped to mop up by March as it revised the target upwards while presenting the interim budget for FY20 in February. This shortfall in FY19 means the income tax department will have to achieve a 23% growth to meet the target of  ₹ 13.8 trillion this fi

Reuters May 20, 2019 LONDON (Reuters) - A collapse of U.S.-China trade talks and hike in tariffs on Chinese goods would push the world economy towards recession and see the Federal Reserve cut U.S. interest rates back to zero within a year, analysts at Morgan Stanley said on Monday. While a temporary escalation of trade tensions could be navigated without much damage at all, a lasting breakdown would inflict serious pain. “If talks stall, no deal is agreed upon and the U.S. imposes 25% tariffs on the remaining circa $300 billion (£235 billion) of imports from China, we see the global economy heading towards recession,” the bank’s analysts said in a note. In response, the Fed would cut rates all the way back to zero by spring 2020 while China would scale up its fiscal stimulus to 3.5% of GDP (equivalent to around $500 billion) and its broad credit growth target to 14-15% a year, they added. “But, a reactive policy response and the usual lags of policy transmissio

Firstpost May 21, 2019 LONDON (Reuters) - Scams in Britain involving currencies and crypto assets like bitcoin totalled 27 million pounds ($34.38 million) in the last financial year, with average losses of 14,600 pounds per victim, the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) said on Tuesday. Reports of scams more than tripled in the year that ended in April to 1,800 as fraudsters often used social media to promote their "get rich quick" online trading platforms, according to an FCA statement. "Investors will often be led to believe that their first investment has successfully made a profit," it said. The fraudster then contacts the victim to invest more money with a false promise of greater profits. The customer account is later closed and the scammer disappears, the FCA said. The FCA said it would run advertising to raise awareness of online trading scams. "We're warning the public to be suspicious of adverts which promise high returns from

Firstpost May 21, 2019 New Delhi:  Global steel major ArcelorMittal on Monday told the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT) that it would pay Rs 42,000 crore, including a minimum of guarantee of Rs 2,500 crore as working capital, for acquiring debt-laden Essar Steel under the insolvency process. Senior advocate Harish Salve appearing for ArcelorMittal also accused Ruias, former Essar Steel promoters, of creating hurdles in the resolution process of the bankrupt steelmaker. According to him, there have been eight attempts by Ruias to create hurdles in the insolvency resolution process of Essar Steel. The NCLAT is hearing a batch of appeals filed by several stakeholders challenging NCLT's approval to ArcelorMittal's resolution plan for Essar Steel. Countering the allegation of Standard Chartered bank overvaluation of Essar Steel, Salve submitted that the liquidation value of Essar Steel was Rs 15,800 crore and ArcelorMittal India is paying almost three ti

freepresskashmir.com April 16, 2019 “Activists are now prevented to travel or have their passport confiscated or blocked from leaving the country.” Belgrade, Serbia:  Amid India’s ongoing elections and the recent controversial decision to partially ban civilian movement on the highway in Jammu and Kashmir, Michael Forst, UN Rapporteur for human rights has called the region an ‘information black hole’ for the global agency. Citing various examples, Forst said numerous communications conveyed to both India and Pakistan regarding human rights violations in Kashmir went unanswered. “We send communications to India and Pakistan and don’t receive replies. So, it’s complicated because it’s sort of a black hole in which there is no real possibility to operate as we do in other countries,” Forst told Free Press Kashmir on the sidelines of International Civil Society Week (ICSW) in Serbia. On being asked about erstwhile UN military observers office in Srinagar, in the summer capita

The Hindu May 21, 2019 ‘Proceedings initiated against 100 people who protested against Sterlite’ The Thoothukudi district administration and the police have initiated proceedings against at least 100 people who took part in the protests against Sterlite Copper, said People’s Watch, a   human rights  organisation, in Madurai on Monday. The organisation said the police were invoking Section 107 of the Cr. PC against them. The provision deals with action to be taken against any person “who is likely to commit a breach of peace or disturb public tranquillity.” Alleging that it was a continuation of a series of ‘tactics’ used by the police and the district administration to harass the protesters, Henri Tiphagne, executive director of People’s Watch, pointed out that the proceedings termed participation in anti-Sterlite protests as a ‘criminal activity.’ One of the summons, sent to K. Vasanthi from Pandarampatti by the Sub-Collector of Thoothukudi, read that the perso

The Hindu May 21, 2019 Reacting angrily to a submission from the Geneva-based Human Rights Council (HRC) on the alleged violations in  Jammu and Kashmir,  India has informed the United Nations body that it will no longer entertain any communication with the HRC’s Special Rapporteurs on its report. The report from the UN body came at the same time a report from two NGOs in the State on the alleged cases of torture was released in Srinagar, which was endorsed by a former UN Special Rapporteur. Queries on action taken The current Special Rapporteurs on Extrajudicial Executions, Torture, and Right to Health — Agnes Callamard, Dainius Puras and Nils Melzer — had referred to a June 2018 report of the Office of the High Commissioner of Human Rights (OHCHR) and written to the government in March 2019, asking about steps taken by New Delhi to address the alleged human rights violations listed in the report. In addition, the Special Rapporteurs had listed “13 cases of con

The Indian Express May 21, 2019 The RBI needs to urgently address the liquidity issues plaguing the NBFC sector The troubles of the non-banking finance companies (NBFCs) continue to reverberate through the financial system, with the ripple effects of the crisis being felt in the broader economy, as seen in the sharp decline in car sales. Part of the problem can be traced to the continuing liquidity deficit in the system. Advertising The average liquidity deficit in the banking system widened during the week ended May 17 to Rs 43,001 crore, up Rs 3,191 crore from the previous week, notes CARE Ratings. To be sure, the liquidity deficit has come down from mid-April to the first week of May, when the net outstanding liquidity deficit averaged Rs 92,979 crore. This decline is largely due to an infusion by the RBI through open market operations (OMOs) and currency swaps. And while the liquidity deficit is likely to ease up further as government spending ramps up in

The Indian Express May 21, 2019 “Should we negotiate with Iran’s ayatollahs?” This is a question which was put by Henry Kissinger, the former US Secretary of State under  Richard Nixon , to Bernard Lewis, the British-American historian of the Middle East. “Certainly not!” came Lewis’s uncompromising response. It looks like the overall stance of the Trump Administration goes in the direction of Lewis’s general doctrine for the future of Iran and the Middle East. Lewis died a year ago, on May 19, 2018, but his influence among the American statesmen and strategists has not decreased. As a matter of fact, in his obituary for Lewis, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo wrote: “I owe a great deal of my understanding of the Middle East to his work. He was also a man who believed, as I do, that Americans must be more confident in the greatness of our country, not less.” Advertising Well, it happens that in the mind of Lewis, the greatness of the United States goes hand in