Budget 2018 might have Rs 740-bn allocation towards fertiliser subsidy. The Union Budget, expected to be tabled in Parliament next week, can allocate around Rs 740 billion for fertiliser subsidies, and the amount is around 5.7 per cent more than the Budget Estimates (BE) of 2016-17 and 6.9 per cent higher than the Revised Estimates (RE) of 2016-17.
Sources said the higher allocation could be on account of an expected increase in natural gas prices because of a projected rise in petroleum rates from $55 a barrel in 2017-18 to an average of $65 a barrel in 2018-19. “The provisioning could be higher because of expected increase in gas price — a key input for companies. Gas prices have already gone up by 10 per cent in the second half of 2017-18 from $2.5 MMBtu to 2.8 MMBtu,” K Ravichandran, senior vice-president and group head, corporate ratings, Icra, told Business Standard. Budget 2018: Time's running out for Modi to shore up rural voters' support. Normally a field of lush green wheat stalks would lift Kishan Singh’s spirits.
Yet weak prices mean even a good crop this year may not stop debt collectors from kicking him off his land in northern India. More than 60 people in Dhamaka, a village of about 230 families some 80 kilometers (50 miles) from India’s capital New Delhi, have received notices threatening to auction their fields. Singh urgently wants Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government to provide debt relief, better prices for his crops and jobs for his sons when it unveils the annual fiscal budget on Feb. 1. “I don’t know how to escape from this crisis,” Singh, 62, said this month while showing the notice to immediately repay Rs 247,296 ($3,886) he owes to the bank. While he previously voted for Modi, he’s unsure who will get his vote in the next national poll due early next year.
Clock’s Ticking “He got a bit of a shock from Gujarat. Budget 2018: Will rules be eased to make marketing operating expenditure? As Finance Minister Arun Jaitley prepares to present Budget 2018, the Narendra Modi-led NDA government’s last full Budget before going for the 2019 general elections, the retail sector wants him to consider reworking the income-tax rules to classify marketing spend as operating expenditure rather than capital expenditure.
With low customer loyalty as is seen in the retail sector, marketing should certainly be understood to be operating expenditure. Even physical retailers that offer end-of-season sales consider discounts as notional operating expenditure. Budget 2018: Betting on stock market boom? Capital gains tax may end party. The taxman may end up being a speed bump for the Indian stock market, which like its counterparts across the world has marched to multiple records in the past year.
Brokerages including Kotak Securities say Prime Minister Narendra Modi's administration may make it harder for investors to claim exemptions on capital gains from equity investments when the federal Budget is announced on February 1. Modi's move in 2016 to scrap high-value currency bills and the implementation of the new sales tax last July have hurt demand and revenue, forcing the government to borrow more.
Budget 2018 issues: After note ban, tax base, digital drive up, realty down. 58% banks report rise in bad loans in July-December period, reveals Survey. The percentage of banks reporting a rise in non performing assets (NPAs) in July-December last year has reduced significantly, indicating stability in credit environment, according to a report.
The latest round of the Ficci-IBA survey drew responses from 19 public sector, private and foreign banks representing 59 per cent of the banking industry by asset size. According to the survey, 58 per cent of the respondent banks reported a rise in NPAs, significantly lower than 80 per cent in the previous round. Infrastructure, metals and engineering goods were key contributors to the bad debt. However, only 28 per cent banks reported a rise in the number of requests for the restructuring of loans as compared to 40 per cent in the previous round. For the forthcoming Union Budget, the banks demanded full tax deduction on the NPA provisioning; reduction in corporate tax rate; and accelerated investments in infrastructure sector. Overseas investors demand status-quo on LTCG tax from Budget 2018.
The Asia Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association (Asifma), a lobby for overseas investors, met with finance ministry officials last week amid buzz that the holding period to avail long-term capital gains (LTCG) in equities could be raised in the Union Budget.
Sources said foreign portfolio investors (FPIs) urged the government not to take such a decision as it would further escalate the cost of transaction and impact incremental flows into domestic equities. Transaction cost for dealing with Indian shares is already one of the highest worldwide. The recent policy measures taken by the government such as tweaks to the tax agreement with Mauritius and additional curbs on participatory notes (p-notes) have increased both the cost and the compliance burden on FPIs.
Budget 2018: After record growth, India's renewables progress is slipping. In line with its climate-change commitments and domestic pollution concerns, India has one of the world’s largest programmes to expand renewables–a tripling of capacity over the next five years.
But after two years of record expansion, the diversion of a national clean-energy cess to subsidise GST (goods and services tax)-induced losses and a new import duty to protect domestic manufacturers of solar equipment threaten to derail India’s ambitious 2022 target. This is why February 1, 2018–the day the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) will present its last full budget before the 2019 general elections–is of particular significance to the renewables sector, which comprises electricity from solar, wind, hydro and bio power. Budget 2018: Centre earmarks Rs 10 bn for fixing Delhi-NCR's pollution woes. The severity of Delhi's air pollution woes has earned the issue a place in the Centre's allocations in Budget 2018.
According to reports, an amount of Rs 10 billion (1,000 crore) will be allocated under Budget 2018 to combat problems like stubble burning, which has been attributed as a major cause for Delhi's now-notorious air quality. In an effort to clean up the capital's air, or at least make it more breathable, and end the residents' annual exercise of choking under a blanket of smog, the Centre has decided to earmark Rs 10 billion (1,000 crore) in the upcoming Budget to curb the practice of stubble burning in Delhi's neighbouring states like Punjab and Haryana, the Times of India reported on Thursday.
How will the Centre put a stop to stubble burning, an issue that proved to be contentious and saw the Delhi and Punjab governments juggle blame last year, and get farmers to find better ways to dispose of agricultural waste? The answer lies in subsidies for said farmers. Budget 2018: Fear of outright populism overdone, say analysts. The current market rally a month before the Budget proposals are announced on February 1 is the best in over a decade, with the S&P BSE Sensex and the Nifty50 indices gaining over six per cent so far in calendar year 2018 and crossing the 36,000- and 11,000-levels, respectively, for the first time ever on Tuesday.
Though most analysts do not expect the proposals to be hugely populist, brokerages would keep a close watch on how the government manages the fiscal situation a year before the country goes to polls scheduled in May 2019, and changes, if any, to the existing norms of long-term capital gains tax (LTCG) on equities. While analysts peg the fiscal deficit for FY19 to be around 3.2 per cent, any change to the LTCG tax structure on equities could be a sentiment damper, analysts say. Increased allocation for infrastructure such as affordable housing, roads, railways, and ports is also possible. Here is a quick compilation of what leading brokerages and research houses expect:
Budget 2018: Managers want Arun Jaitley to align tax cycle to calendar year. A Deloitte survey of pre-Budget expectations of managers on personal income tax shows that most give a thumbs-up to aligning the tax year with the calendar year.
Jurisdiction-free e-assessment of tax returns, a gradual reduction in personal tax rates in line with changes to the corporation tax structure and enhanced tax breaks for education of kids are among other key Budget 2018 demands from Finance Minister Arun Jaitley. Indian managers are keen to align the tax year (April-March) with the calendar year (January-December), despite chances of initial hardships. In a survey of around 700-odd managers, a majority of respondents (84 per cent) want the Indian tax year to be changed from the financial year to the calendar year. A little over half (52 per cent) are in favour of bringing agricultural income under the tax ambit.
Business-standard. Budget 2018: Retailers seek industry status, simple GST, better FDI norms. In the run up to the budget, retailers have asked the government to simplify GST system and grant industry status to the sector for easier access to finance and attract more investments. Besides, the industry is also seeking relaxed FDI regime for multi-brand retail trade (MBRT) as also incentives to be provided for setting up warehousing and cold-chain storage facilities. In a pre-budget wish list, the Retailers Association of India (RAI) said invoices issued to BTC (bank transfer compliant) consumers must be simplified and the need for manual signature and multiple copies to get GST refund must be removed.
Budget 2018: Jaitley's speech, deficit data to decide rupee's fate in 2018. Don’t let the rupee’s strength fool you, strategists say. The rally that boosted the currency to the strongest in 32 months will probably be short-lived. The rupee is facing headwinds as elevated energy prices threaten to increase inflation and worsen public finances in a nation that imports most of its oil needs. Traders are also bracing for higher government spending as Prime Minister Narendra Modi is set to take measures in the February budget to revive an economy that’s forecast to grow at the slowest pace in four years.
How Modi fares in reining in the fiscal deficit while seeking to jump-start activity may determine the currency’s direction for the remainder of the year, analysts say. “The budget could well set the tone for the rupee in 2018,” said Aditya Pugalia, Dubai-based director of financial markets at Emirates NBD PJSC, the second most-accurate forecaster in Bloomberg’s quarterly rankings. Bitcoin can't save Putin, Kim Jong-un or Maduro from the sanctions squeeze. Vladimir Putin’s finance ministry wants to let cryptocurrencies trade on official Russian exchanges. Kim Jong Un’s hackers are stealing digital cash. Nicolas Maduro hopes a cryptocurrency backed by oil will lure investment back to Venezuela. All three leaders are wading into the crypto-craze as their regimes grapple with the same problem: Sanctions curbing their access to the global financial system.
But while bitcoin and opaque virtual currencies can provide sources of cash for political pariahs, the market’s still too nascent to make a meaningful skirting of a US-led economic blockade possible. SBI to Sun Pharma: Top 10 stock picks by mutual funds in December. As the year 2017 was nearing its end, India's equity fund managers were busy in shuffling their portfolios before the new year begins - which most see as a challenging year studded with lot of volatility. Interestingly, after several years, two public sector banks (other than the mammoth State Bank of India) emerged as most chased stocks by fund managers.
Shares of Punjab National Bank and Union Bank of India were heavily lapped up as fund managers poured in over Rs 19 billion in the two counters. Fund managers say that recent actions taken to contain NPAs and additional money being pumped into these banks have brought back the public sector banks on the radar. CII asks for inclusion of all petroleum products under GST at the earliest. Industry body Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) has asked for the inclusion of all petroleum products under the goods and services tax (GST) at the earliest. GST was rolled out on July 1, 2017, subsuming most of the central and state indirect taxes into a single tax. However, petroleum products like crude oil, natural gas, diesel, petrol, and aviation fuel are outside the ambit of GST as of now. In its suggestions to the Union government, CII said until this is done, C Forms should be continued to avoid high tax incidence on these products.
Though the understanding is that the previous value-added tax (VAT) and central sales tax (CST) rules would continue to apply to the excluded products. However, the related sectors continue to incur huge GST impact on all inputs without any set-off, as the sale of crude oil and natural gas are outside the purview of GST and are subject to existing OIDB cess, CST Act and state VAT, said a CII press release. Aquaman, Deadpool, Star Wars: Hollywood hopes to up the game in 2018. Over the past three years, one of the most significant developments at the Indian box office has been the increasing clout of Hollywood titles.
Commanding close to 13 per cent of the total box office revenue in 2017, the genre has seen a spike in footfalls, revenue and consequently, a definite spike in interest by the multi-national studios in India as a market. Attack on couples by khap panchayat absolutely illegal: Supreme Court. The Supreme Court today termed as "absolutely illegal" any attack by khap panchayats or associations against an adult man and woman opting for inter- caste marriage. EV push: Govt may amend Electricity Act to boost charging stations. The power ministry is considering ending the lock on electricity sales by distributors as one way to speed up growth in vehicle charging stations, according to a ministry official with knowledge of the plan.
The approach would require amending the Electricity Act, which only allows distributors to sell power, including for electric-vehicle charging stations, according to the official, who asked not to be identified as the information isn’t public. Beyond Modi-Netanyahu bonhomie: India, Israel struggle to add heft to ties. Even as Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Israeli counterpart Benjamin Netanyahu praised one another for “revolutionising” the bilateral relationship, the nine agreements signed – on subjects ranging from cyber security to homeopathic research – suggest the two countries are finding it hard to match the heady rhetoric with concrete outcomes in areas that matter.
Banking Q3 preview: Private banks to outperform PSBs; bad assets to go down. How is the banking sector placed in Q3? Siddharth Purohit takes a look in this Business Standard Special The credit growth for the banking system has picked up marginally during the last few months. 49% FDI in aviation: The political privatisation of Air India is underway. The government has taken one more small step in coming to grips with one of the most difficult parts of giving a decent burial to the Indian public sector – privatising Air India.
SC crisis seems to be unresolved, will be settled in 2-3 days: AG Venugopal. Attorney General K K Venugopal on Tuesday said the crisis in the Supreme Court seems to be unresolved and hoped it will be "fully settled" in a couple of days, remarks that come a day after he stated that everything was settled in the higher judiciary. A crisis erupted on January 12 after four senior judges -- Justices J Chelameswar, Ranjan Gogoi, Madan B Lokur and Kurian Joseph -- openly castigated the functioning of the top court headed by Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra. "Yes, I think it has not been settled. These five shocks could thwart two-year emerging-market rally.
Now, Ramdev's Patanjali products to be available on Flipkart, Amazon, Paytm. Budget 2018 will be Modi govt's biggest challenge in 4 years. Here's why. Unlike most countries, the budget is usually an eventful affair in India and is a heated topic of national conversation around the time of its release. The underlying national interest behind it is mostly because the budget holds something for everyone -- ranging from a small farmer to a big industrialist. However, from this year onwards, much of its sheen will be off by a bit.
The tinkering of indirect taxes, which was an aspect of the budget that affected everyone in all corners of the country, is not within the Centre's domain anymore. Debt-laden Air India to be split into four entities ahead of sale. JioCoin: Reliance planning own cryptocurrency, Akash Ambani to lead project. Budding Israel-India romance tested by Narendra Modi's balancing act. Sebi curb: Price Waterhouse set to lose 75 listed firms to rivals. Markets end at new closing highs, Nifty settles above 10,650; Infosys flat. Rules not being adhered to: Questions raised by 4 judges in letter to CJI. SC judges and the ghost of Emergency: The other shameful chapter. It's a Black Day for our judiciary: Ujjwal Nikam on SC judges' press meet. Full text of the letter by four SC judges to CJI. Four SC judges come out against CJI, say protect SC to preserve democracy. Ahead of Budget 2018, PM and economists brainstorm on ways to revive growth.
Berkshire promotes potential Buffett successors Gregory Abel, Ajit Jain. SC to send 186 anti-Sikh riot cases from 1984 to fresh three-member SIT. Naspers may invest $200 mn in online food-delivery company Swiggy. Deposit money as directed, Tihar is not far, Supreme Court warns Jaypee. EPF to ELSS: Five key investments you can make under Section 80C. Financial bidding for resolution of 12 big NPA accounts by month-end: SBI. CES 2018: From Kodak cryptocurrency to HTC Vive Pro, know everything here. Sebi mulling lower limit of Rs 100 mn m-cap for firms to stay listed. Bhima-Koregaon: When new Dalit leadership faces off with Hindutva project.
More USFDA approvals do not mean better margins for Indian 'big pharma' India has enormous potential, says World Bank, projects 7.3% growth in 2018. AirAsia India is planning an IPO; why it needs to be profitable before that. Country's oil demand growth weakest since 2013 as economy declines. Reforms to slowdown in 2018 ahead of Lok Sabha polls: Moody's.
Maruti Suzuki India hikes prices by up to Rs 17,000 across models. Keep away from benami transactions or face action, warns I-T dept. FDI norms relaxed, foreign airlines can invest up to 49% in Air India. UIDAI's 'Virtual ID' won't address privacy concerns of those without a cell. From domestic growth to global economy: Key risks for markets in 2018. Budget 2018: Arun Jaitley may hike tax exemption from Rs 250,000 to Rs 300,000. How CAT 2017 saw a rise in non-engineers in the 100 percentile club. News digest: PMLA rules, spectrum holding limit, H1B visa rules, and more. Just one can poison all of Delhi's water: India needs laws for EV batteries. Tax law likely to send factories, jobs out of the US, say critics. Telecom panel for higher limit on spectrum holding for mobile operators. Relief for Indian techies, US says no change in H-1B visa extension. Govt proposes allowing all sectors to hire workers on fixed-term contracts.
Aadhaar could be a single target for cyber criminals: RBI researchers. Direct tax boost before Budget 2018: Apr-Dec collection up 18.2% at Rs 6.6 trn. Budget 2018: Finance ministry may tweak tax norms for listed stocks. GST: Anti-profiteering complaint form is expected to become simpler. Budget 2018: Larger institutional financing possible for animal husbandry. 'End jungle raj', Siddaramaiah slams Yogi after UP CM's 'beef eater' barb. Energy subsidies cut by $15 bn; fossil fuels still largest beneficiaries. Business Standard. BS Odisha Round Table: Naveen firm on tribunal to resolve Mahanadi issue. MARKETS LIVE: Sensex opens at record high, Nifty hits 10,600 for 1st time.
Tata airlines Vistara and AirAsia India gear up for international runways. Top firms get GST notices on credit claims; replies sought within hours. 7 reasons why FY18 GDP growth forecast should be viewed with caution. Business Standard. Demonetisation, GST effects: GDP growth seen at 4-year low of 6.5% Business Standard. Business Standard. Jadhav says not tortured in Pak custody, India dubs video as propaganda. How to deal with Hafiz Saeed? A major worry for 'clueless' Pakistan. Why airlines don't deboard passengers when there's delay on tarmac. Business Standard. Individuals, NGOs can buy electoral bonds without public disclosure. Looking at cryptocurrencies? These altcoins are rising faster than bitcoin.
Business Standard. UIDAI begins probe on breach of Aadhaar database, initiates FIR. Govt seeks nod for Rs 800-billion PSB recapitalisation through bonds. Idea Cellular plans to raise Rs 67.5 billion before Vodafone merger. Trump blocks $1.1 bn security aid to Islamabad; can survive, says Pakistan. MARKETS LIVE: Sensex hits record high, Nifty tests 10,550 for 1st time ever. Global wealth shifting to Asia with China in lead: Billionaire 2017 list. Services bounce back to growth in December on fresh biz, reveals PMI. Business Standard. England, Israel now planning bitcoin-like currency but can it replace cash? Business Standard.