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Financial Express February 10, 2020 During 2016-17, the fair trade regulator levied a total fine of Rs 208.39 crore on 18 companies in 4 cases, while a fine totalling Rs 295.35 crore was imposed on 31 companies in 9 cases in 2017-18, the Minister of of State for Finance and Corporate Affairs said in a written reply in the Lok Sabha. The Competition Commission imposed a total penalty of over Rs 840 crore on 126 companies in the last three financial years for indulging in anti-competitive practices, Union Minister Anurag Singh Thakur said on Monday. During 2016-17, the fair trade regulator levied a total fine of Rs 208.39 crore on 18 companies in 4 cases, while a fine totalling Rs 295.35 crore was imposed on 31 companies in 9 cases in 2017-18, the Minister of State for Finance and Corporate Affairs said in a written reply in the Lok Sabha. The Competition Commission of India (CCI) in 2018-19 imposed a total penalty of Rs 337.1 crore on 77 companies in 17 cases, he add...

The Wire February 09, 2020 The government is planning to sell a 5% stake in Steel Authority of India Ltd (SAIL) through an offer for sale, which could fetch about Rs 1,000 crore to the exchequer, an official said. Officials from the Department of Investment and Public Asset Management (DIPAM) and steel ministry are planning roadshows in Singapore and Hong Kong for SAIL stake sale. However, the Hong Kong roadshow might be called off due to the coronavirus outbreak. The government holds a 75% stake in SAIL. It had last sold a 5% stake in the steel CPSE in December 2014. “We are looking at a 5% stake sale via offer for sale (OFS), but we will assess investor demand in the roadshows,” an official said. At the current market price, the government may raise about Rs 1,000 crore by selling a 5% stake in the company. Shares of SAIL closed at Rs 48.65 apiece on Friday, down 0.51% over the previous close on the BSE. The government may look at completing the transactio...

Financial Express February 13, 2020 The Genome India Project, which got the government’s go-ahead last week, aims to map the diversity of India’s genetic pool, and “lay the bedrock of personalised medicine.” The Rs 238-crore project, which will be a collaboration between 20 Indian research institutions, with the Indian Institute of Science’s Centre for Brain Research serving as its nodal point, will, in its first stage, develop a reference Indian genome using genetic samples from 10,000 persons across India. This will enable greater medicinal efficiency in terms of preventive interventions and customised treatments. Existing global genetic studies in the aftermath of the Human Genome Project are based mainly (95%) on Caucasian, urban samples; add to this the diversity, both horizontal (caused by migration and intermixing of races) and vertical (caused due to endogamy or exogamy resulting in specific patterns of trait inheritance), obtained in India, and the disease burden of co...

The Wire  February 09, 2020 The commencement of the Malaysia-India Comprehensive Economic Cooperation Agreement (MICECA), which led to reduction in import duty differential between crude and refined palm oil products to 7.5% from the usual 10%, stirred up the hornet’s nest in the Indian palm oil refining industry.  In addition to this agreement, the consecutive hike in “crude” palm oil export tax by Indonesia and Malaysia both for January and February 2020, to protect their own refining industry against rising feedstock prices, forced Indian refiners to seek a hike in import tax on “refined” palm oil products by New Delhi.  However, the customs notification released after the presentation of the Budget for the year 2020-21 seems to have caused confusion in the industry. As per the notification, the import tax on “crude” palm oil has been hiked to 44% from the existing 37.5%, without a suitable rise for “refined” products. This is against the actual demand ...

Financial Express,  February 13, 2020 The joint select committee on the Personal Data Protection Bill is holding public consultations amid concerns regarding privacy and exemptions granted to government for processing data in case of national security. The stakeholders are required to send their comments in three weeks, after which more meetings may happen to evolve a consensus around the Bill. The Bill, which was cleared by the Cabinet in December 2019 and later tabled in Parliament, was sent to the select committee as many activists expressed apprehensions regarding a clause in the Bill, which allows processing of personal data without explicit consent of the owner in cases of national security and also seeks to empower the government to exempt any government agency from the provisions of the proposed legislation. The Bill, based on the recommendations of the Justice Srikrishna committee, was finalised after holding multiple rounds of meetings between various stakehol...

Financial Express,  February 13, 2020 Dr Reddy’s Laboratories will acquire select divisions of Wockhardt’s branded generics business in India and a few other international territories of Nepal, Sri Lanka, Bhutan and Maldives for a consideration of Rs 1,850 crore. The two sides have signed a definitive agreement to this effect on Tuesday, according to a statement. The business comprises a portfolio of 62 brands in multiple therapy areas such as respiratory, neurology, dermatology, gastroenterology, pain and vaccines, which would be transferred to Dr Reddy’s along with related sales and marketing teams and the manufacturing plant located in Baddi, Himachal Pradesh. The business undertaking is being transferred on a slump sale basis. Analysts say that the deal works well for both Wockhardt and Dr Reddy’s. For Wockhardt, it has created a space for tomorrow’s business as the funds raised will be used to improve its liquidity position with the company aiming for double di...

Business Line  February 09, 2020 Trilochan Mohapatra, Director- General of the Indian Council for Agricultural Research (ICAR), has said that research work on genome editing, speed breeding and marker-associated breeding will be conducted to break the intrinsic yield barriers of energy-rich oilseed crops. Addressing the two-day meet on oilseed sector here on Friday, he said the focus should be on a healthy oil consumption to the extent of 6 kg per head per year. There was a need to have a long-term strategy to reduce the edible oil import bill. “The move to set up 36 seed hubs for meeting the quality seed supply is a significant step towards achieving higher oilseeds production,” he said. He felt that there was a need to make further value addition in castor to increase export of castor products. A Vishnuvardhan Reddy, Director of Indian Institute of Oilseeds Research (ICAR-IIOR), said the country depended on imports of vegetable oil for over 60 per cent of...

The Hindu February 11, 2020 “The Budget provides $1.5 billion for the Indo-Pacific, reflecting a strong Administration commitment to ensuring that the region remains free, open, and independent of malign Chinese influence,” it said. The Trump administration has proposed $1.5 billion in budgetary allocation for 2021 fiscal for the crucial Indo-Pacific region, which it said was part of its efforts to ensure that the region remains “free, open, and independent of malign Chinese influence”. “The future of the Indo-Pacific, which contains roughly half the world’s population and many of the fastest-growing economies, is critical to U.S. security and long-term economic interests,” the White House said in its budgetary proposal for the financial year 2021, beginning October 1, 2020. “The Budget provides $1.5 billion for the Indo-Pacific, reflecting a strong Administration commitment to ensuring that the region remains free, open, and independent of malign Chinese influence,...

Financial Express,  February 13, 2020 The Union Budget may not have transcended the fiscal clichés that go with such announcements, but the point made on disinvestment of the Life Insurance Corporation of India (LIC) will go down as the big story to track during the year. LIC has been the star of government-owned institutions, and has continuously been the bastion of security and assurance for a myriad of policyholders. In fact, it cannot be denied that when a policy is due for redemption, no other company makes the effort to trace the policyholder as much as LIC does! Such is the reputation of LIC that any talk of any kind of disinvestment makes for a big story. There are evidently arguments on both sides on whether such a disinvestment is required or not, but that is not really the point here. It may be assumed that this has been worked out by the finance ministry and an informed decision has been taken based on such evaluation. As it has been stated that there will b...

Financial Express,  February 13, 2020 In an effort to boost goods and services tax (GST) collections, the Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs (CBIC) has sent a directive to zonal heads of the indirect tax department to recover a whopping Rs 46,000 crore from taxpayers on account of penal interests arising from delayed payment of tax with GSTR-3B returns. The last date for filing GSTR-3B for any month is 20th of the subsequent month; an annual interest of 18% is payable on the gross tax amount for any delay. You are requested to look into the issue personally and to urge the field formations under your jurisdiction for making recovery of applicable interest from the identified taxpayers and to furnish weekly report of GSTIN-wise recovery of interest made in this regard,” CBIC member AK Pandey wrote to principal chief and chief commissioners on Monday. No more 'gaming' of tax system, says Modi; here's how he plans to grow income tax baseNo more 'g...

The Hindu February 10, 2020 One of the men was hospitalised with kidney failure and 11 broken ribs. Another was nearly unrecognisable to his wife when he was wheeled into a courtroom. A third was stitched up after being attacked by a security dog. Then the three Palestinians were returned to their Israeli interrogators. They had been swept up in a sprawling manhunt launched after a roadside bomb killed a 17-year-old Israeli girl and wounded her father and brother as they hiked down to a spring last August in the occupied West Bank. The attack raised fears of a sophisticated militant cell that might strike again, and Israeli interrogators appear to have treated it as a ticking time-bomb scenario. Israeli and Palestinian rights groups say there is strong evidence that Israeli interrogators tortured several detainees in violation of Israeli and international law. The allegations against Israel are the most serious to come to light in years, and the rights groups say they p...

Hindustan Times,  February 13, 2020 Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and TikTok will have to reveal users’ identities if Indian government agencies ask them to, according to the country’s controversial new rules for social media companies and messaging apps expected to be published later this month. The requirement comes as governments around the world are trying to hold social media companies more accountable for the content that circulates on their platforms, whether it’s fake news, child porn, racist invective or terrorism-related content. India’s new guidelines go further than most other countries’ by requiring blanket cooperation with government inquiries, no warrant or judicial order required. India proposed these guidelines in December 2018 and asked for public comment. The Internet and Mobile Association of India, a trade group that counts Facebook Inc, Amazon.com Inc and Alphabet Inc’s Google among its members, responded that the requirements “would be a violatio...

The Hindu February 10, 2020 The momentum of the bilateral trade between India and the US is moving in favour of Washington, mainly due to the sudden increase in energy import by New Delhi, the head of a top India-centric American trade and strategic advocacy group has said. Noting that the India-U.S. trade has gone up from $142 billion in 2018 to $160 billion in 2019, President of US India Strategic and Partnership Forum (USISPF) Mukesh Aghi said that the energy import by India from the US had shot up dramatically. “If you look at three years ago, it was almost zero. Now as of last year’s cross $6 billion, and we expect this to cost $10 billion this fiscal year. So, the momentum is moving in favour of U.S.,” Mr. Aghi told PTI. He said the bilateral trade numbers were going up without the trade deal and when the big ticket items such as Boeing planes were not being delivered. India’s private air carrier Spice Jet has placed an order for 200 planes to Boeing. As such, the ...

Hindustan Times,  February 11, 2020 The CIA and Germany’s BND secretly owned and ran for decades a company that made and sold code-writing machines for secret communications to many countries, including India, and easily unencrypted the intercepted messages and shared the intercepted information among a tight group of partners. The Washington Post that uncovered the secret operation from CIA classified documents, in a joint project with German broadcaster ZDF, said the company called Crypto AG was based in Switzerland and was dismembered and sold off in 2018 to separate companies, who were no aware of its antecedents. The Post reported that India was among the company’s more than 120 clients, along with Pakistan. The report did not specify, however, any Indian intelligence operation or communication that may have been intercepted, and used, though it mention a few, such as Iranian and Egyptian messages. Countries spy on each other and this is not the first time ...

Hindustan Times,  February 13, 2020 In a major move, the Uttarakhand government empowered district magistrates to permit commercial mining on private land in the state. Earlier, the permission was given by the state government itself. The decision was taken by the government during its cabinet meeting led by Chief Minister Trivendra Singh Rawat at state secretariat on Wednesday. There were 13 proposals which were discussed; out of these, 10 were approved while remaining three were kept for further discussion in the next cabinet meeting. Madan Kaushik, cabinet minister and spokesperson of state government, while informing mediapersons about the decision, said the district magistrates of all the 13 districts of state would now have the power to permit mining on private land. “Now after the government decision, a patta holder (deed holder) of a private land would need to apply before the respective district magistrate with appropriate documents to seek permission f...

Hindustan Times February 11, 2020 Keen to compensate for the loss of access to the European Single Market after Brexit, the Boris Johnson government on Monday announced the setting up of up to ten new innovative ‘freeports’ to boost trade and revenue from 2021. Rishi Sunak, chief secretary to the Treasury, said: “Freeports will unleash the potential in our proud historic ports, boosting and regenerating communities across the UK as we level up. They will attract new businesses, spreading jobs, investment and opportunity to towns and cities up and down the country”. “This is all part of our mission as an open, outward-looking country, championing global free trade with vibrant Freeports that work for all of the UK”. Benefits of the freeports include goods brought in not attracting tariffs until they leave the freeport and enter the domestic market; no duty is payable if the goods are re-exported; when raw materials are imported and processed into a final good, duties are only pa...

The Times of India,  February 12, 2020 The Income Tax (I-T) department will share all taxpayers' data like PAN (permanent account number) information with Sebi (Securities and Exchange Board of India) in order to help the capital market regulator in its probe against various entities, including those involved in 'stock market manipulation', an official order has said. The Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT), which frames policy for the tax department, had issued an order in this context on February 10 under section 138 (1) of the I-T Act. The sharing of information will be under three broad heads: request-based exchange of data, suo moto and automatic. The two organisations are expected to ink a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) soon in order to implement the decision and chalk out modalities of exchange of data, maintenance of confidentiality, mechanism for safe preservation of data and weeding out after usage. The CBDT said under the suo moto ex...