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ONLINE TRADING: A FEW TIPS
2008-03-26 16:32:00
Online Trading offers lot of investment opportunities. You can trade or invest in Equities, Commodities, Futures, Derivatives, IPOs, Mutual Funds, Tax Saving Certificates and Forex Markets through paperless online transactions.   However, you need to thoroughly understand your service provider’s onscreen trading window, before carrying out any such transactions. A slight negligence may cost you a huge monetary loss. There are two types of basic transactions namely ‘buy’ and ’sell’ orders. Again, ’sell’ orders are classified into ’selling long’ and ’selling short’ orders. While there is no confusion as far as a ‘buy’ order is concerned, one needs to understand ’sell’ order(s) properly before carrying out such transactions. When you are selling shares that you own in your Demat Account, you are selling ‘long’. In this case, shares owned by you will be sold out and the profit earned wi...
More About: Finance , Tips , Online

Bed and breakfast
2008-03-25 12:38:00
The Bed and Breakfast scheme (B&Bs) is to provide a clean and affordable place for foreign and domestic tourists alike, including an opportunity for foreign tourists to stay with an Indian family to experience Indian customs and traditions and relish authentic Indian cuisine. The bed and breakfast (registration and regulation) ordinance 2007 allows people, who intend to offer their house to guests, through a system of registration by a prescribed authority. The condition is that there should be adequate space to house the guests. The owner should be able to provide quality food prepared in hygienic conditions and proper sleeping arrangements to the guests. The scheme is different from the paying guest accommodation scheme, which provides for long-term and medium-term stay. Any residential premises with one to five rooms with attached bath and toilet, having adequate supply of electricity and water with parking facilities can register under this scheme. Hygienic food and privacy...
More About: Culture , Bed and Breakfast

AGRICULTURE BASED SERVICE SECTOR
2008-03-24 15:49:00
The Mahindra & Mahindra group is exploring growth opportunities in the fresh produce supply chain space through its agri-business initiative - Mahindra Shubh Laabh Service s (MSSL). It is close to finalising a JV with an international supply-chain heavyweight. MSSL is already supplying fresh produce to global retailers like Carrefour and Tesco, Albert Heijn and Sainsburry’s and may consider a cash-and-carry JV with one of the players, sources said. MSSL is positioning itself as a back-end supply-chain partner for organized retail, sources said. It currently supplies fresh produce to retailers like Subhiksha, Reliance and others.   MSSL CEO Vikram Puri said: “We are considering the supply aggregation space for organised retail. We will offer a bouquet of supply-chain services and are developing capabilities for strong supply chain, logistics support and the infrastructure to back a successful retail venture.” MSSL currently procures fruits and vegetables fr...
More About: Culture , Agriculture , Service Sector

LESS THAN WE SURVEY
2008-03-24 07:56:00
The fast growing, globalizing Indian economy is expected to slow down to a pace of 8.7 per cent this year, according to the latest Economic Survey 2007-08. The strong message that it sends out is that maintaining overall growth rate at 9 per cent - that has been the experience of the last two years - is a challenge and raising it further to 10 per cent is a greater one. This deceleration or “some degree of cyclical fluctuation” is occurring against the backdrop of heightened global economic uncertainties, including the prospect of full-blown recession in the US economy. The fast globalizing economy has also attracted record inflows· of capital. Portfolio and foreign direct investments have been booming and have resulted in a sharp appreciation of the rupee vis-a-vis the US dollar. This has, in turn, affected the competitiveness of India’s exports, with manufactured exports to the US slowing down this year. Some of this has affected industrial perform...
More About: Finance

THE SENSEX
2008-03-24 05:30:00
Being the oldest stock exchange in Asia with a rich heritage, BOMBAY STOCK EXCHANGE, is popularly known as BSE. It was established as ?THE NATIVE SHARE & STOCK BROKERS ASSOCIATIONS? in 1875. It was given permanent recognition in 1956 by the GOVERNMENT OF INDIA, the first stock exchange in the country to get this status, under the Securities Contracts (Regulation) Act, 1956.   The Exchange’s pivotal and pre-eminent role in the development of the Indian capital market is widely recognized and its index, SENSEX, is tracked worldwide. Earlier an Association of Persons (AOP), the Exchange is now a demutualised and corporatised entity incorporated under the provisions of the Companies Act, 1956, pursuant to the BSE (Corporatisation and Demutualisation) Scheme, 2005 notified by the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI). The BSE Sensex or Bombay Stock Exchange Sensitive Index is a value-weighted index composed of over 4000 stocks with the base April 1979 = 100. It consists...
More About: Finance

TECHNOLOGICAL COOPERATION IS REQUIRED
2008-03-23 15:41:00
In early February, the US National Academy of Engineering released a report on ‘Grand Challenges for Engineering in the 21st Century’. The goal is to focus attention on the potential of technology to help the world address poverty and environmental threats. The list includes potential breakthroughs such as low-cost solar power, safe disposal of CO2 from power plants, nuclear fusion, new educational technologies, and the control of environmental side effects from nitrogen fertilisers. The report, like the Gates Foundation’s similar list of ‘Grand Challenges’ in global health, highlights a new global priority: promoting advanced technologies for sustainable development.   We are used to thinking about global cooperation in fields such as monetary policy, disease control, or nuclear weapons proliferation. We are less accustomed to thinking of global cooperation to promote new technologies, such as clean energy, a malaria vaccine, or drought-resistant...
More About: Culture , Cooperation

WE NEED A SUSTAINED GROWTH
2008-03-23 15:34:00
The last few years have been momentous for the Indian economy, growing at an average pace of about 8.5%. An important factor directly contributing to this growth momentum is the overdrive of the governments -central as well as the states-in inviting investments, both foreign and domestic. There is no denying that investment remains one of the most important ways to tackle the scourge of unemployment and consequently to take the people out of the crass of poverty. However, a major question that arises is whether capital inflows are sufficient to take a country to the path of all round economic development.   A litmus test for economic progress is not the extent of investment that a country can absorb, but whether it has a business environment that nurtures entrepreneurship and is free from heavy handed political and bureaucratic intervention. The prosperity of a nation is reckoned not only by the material well-being of its people but whether there exists elements which ensure t...
More About: Culture , Growth

WHAT IS THAT GOVERNMENT CAN BANK UPON?
2008-03-23 07:52:00
Corporate houses worried about the Competition Commission of India (CCI) potentially slowing down their inorganic growth plans can take heart. India’s competition regulator is unlikely to finalise its merger control provisions before it becomes full-fledged, which, according to the current scheme of things, would take a year, at least. This means that the draft regulations framed by the existing set-up (of one member, a few experts and supporting staff) which does not have the legal sanction to be a regulator with authority can be thoroughly rewritten by the full commission later when it finalises these regulations. As per the CCI Act, the commission acquires legal authority when it has a chairman and at least two members. India Inc has of late been a strident critic of the merger control provisions - which are essentially contained in the act and supplemented by the regulations - for their potential to scupper -mergers, amalgamations and acquisitions. The inve...
More About: Government , Culture , Finance , Bank

THE FRINGE BENEFIT TAX
2008-03-23 07:48:00
The government introduced fringe benefit tax (FBT) on employee stock options (ESOPs) in the 2007 Budget. FBT is payable by the employer on the ESOP benefits granted to the employees, upon exercise of the option by the employee. While enacting the law, a provision was introduced enabling the recovery of the FBT from the employees: In December 2007, the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) came out with its circular, providing some important clarifications.   Employees who work in different countries incur personal tax liabilities in the respective countries, including ESOP benefits. The CBDT has stated in the circular that where the employer has paid FBT on ESOPs provided to an employee based in India and subsequently recovered the FBT from him, the employee can claim credit for such FBT against the tax payable in his home country on such ESOPs. FBT paid by the employer and recovered from the employee, according to the CBDT, amounts to a surrogate tax on the employer...
More About: Culture , Fringe , Benefit

The Queer Logic Of Security
2008-03-22 14:23:00
It used to be the stuff of science fiction, dystopian visions of a place and state where individual freedom and privacy are quaint concepts, long consigned to nebulous memory. And so far, we’ve felt other countries, say, the US and the UK were already at an Orwellian ‘Big Brother is watching you’ stage. What with their plethora of CCTVs eyeing all except the contents of the kitchen sink, the high-tech, invasive snooping recording the recipe mother relates over the phone et al. Now, the Indian state also seems desirous of making a foray into that hazy world. It’s to do with the potential subversive, anti-national character of BlackBerry devices. A tame start may be, but unseemly eventualities can have a quiet beginning - think of a murder in an Agatha Christie book cascading from, say, a granny having a quiet cup of tea amid well-tended gardens and birdsong. Perhaps not an apt comparison, but hopefully illustrative! The department of telecom (DoT), it is lear...
More About: Security , Culture , Logic

EXCISE ON PHARMA; LOAD ON CONSUMER
2008-03-22 08:02:00
In a first-of-its-kind move, the drug price regulator asked pharmaceutical companies to pass on the benefit of the recent excise duty cut to consumers even on medicines that are outside government’s price control. This will reduce prices by 4.58% on brands that account for three fourth of the Rs 33,000-crore domestic pharmaceutical market.   While intervening in the control-free segment of the market for the first time to emphasise that excise cut benefit should be passed on to consumers, the price regulator said emphatically that companies “must” reduce prices. The regulator also said it will use a public interest clause in the drug pricing law to enforce Monday’s order. Finance minister P Chidambaram had halved the excise duty on all medicines from 16 % to 8 % in this year’s budget. Excise duty will now be levied on 64.5% of the MRP instead of 57.5% earlier. This works out to a 4.58% cut in the MRP on all medicines.   Drug makers have to s...
More About: Culture , Consumer , Pharma , Load

MUSIC FIGHTS BACK
2008-03-22 07:25:00
Some singers do not charge fees these days after completing a song in Bollywood . It is not out of a sense of philanthropy; but the knowledge that the real earnings are not from the one-off fee, instead, from the money spinning stage performances that are to follow, as music makes a strong comeback in the new Bollywood. Like a lost diamond, the Hindi movie song has been lying in a film of dust since the late nineties, its glitter fading every year. But it is beginning to shine again. After a decline in sales that began 12 years ago, Indian music is beginning to look up with a return of good lyrics, great music, better promotion, renewed listener interest and bigger margins. For the first time, the music industry is propping itself up again, supported by digital music rather. International movie and music companies are coming to Bollywood, and are set to bring with them a mirage that has eluded composers and writers for long: royalties. But at the heart of it, there w...
More About: Music , Fights , Back

LOAN TO WAIVE OFF LOANS
2008-03-22 07:19:00
The Centre is planning to fund the farm loan waiver package over the next 24 months and at least 25% of the total Rs 60,000 crore package will be met through government borrowings. The waiver package will be a part of the supplementary budget that will be presented later this week. Finance minister P Chidambaram has said he will tell Parliament how the government would compensate banks for the losses incurred on account of the farm loan waiver worth Rs 60,000 crore. There is enough headroom for the government to raise Rs 15,000 crore: a source said. The government expects a higher revenue collection by the dose of the current financial year. The size of the expenditure budget of the government is more than Rs 7lakh crore. Sources in finance ministry have hinted that the both tax and non-tax revenues and even proceeds from disinvestment may be some of the options for funding the scheme. State governments will also have a share of the burden. The finance ministry is ...
More About: Culture , Loans , Loan

HOW CRITICAL IS FISCAL DEFICIT?
2008-03-22 07:14:00
Is reining in fiscal deficit critical for the macro economic health of the nation? The issue is almost akin to that of a family spending more than it earns, month after month, and year after year. Perhaps the only difference is that the fiscal profligacy of the government does not necessarily result in bankruptcy. Governments can simply print money to support their overspending. However, nations have now become aware that printing money to meet deficits invariably lead to massive inflation. Therefore, governments issue bonds to bridge the fiscal gap. But the entry of a giant-sized borrower into the debt market, leads to three negative fall-outs. First, the interest rate in the market place begins to spike. And this directly hurts investment and capital formation. It also deters those who borrow from banks to purchase white goods, automobiles, or even seek student loans. Second, equally important is what economists’ call “crowding out private investments...
More About: Finance , Fiscal , Deficit , Critical

WE NEED EQUITABLE TAX STRUCTURE
2008-03-21 07:43:00
This year has seen an exceptionally high growth in direct tax collection. In the nine months for which data are available, personal income- tax collection has risen by 42 % over last year compared to an estimated 15% rise in the 2007 -08 budget. Corporate taxes have grown by 37% over the last year between April-December. The reasons for this extraordinary direct tax performance are the buoyant economy, more effective and extensive use of IT for widening the direct tax base and improving compliance. These positive trends are likely to continue in the future as well, so the present and future finance ministers could be confident that direct tax revenues will remain on a growth trajectory. This is, then, the right time to introduce some changes that will make the direct tax structure more progressive and thereby more inclusive. These changes should also be such that they encourage entrepreneurship and innovation in the economy. We need to change the existing personal tax ...
More About: Finance , Structure

WHAT IS EXPAT TAX?
2008-03-21 07:39:00
There?s nothing like immigration issues to grab everybody’s attention. Especially when you’re the ruling government of Britain and you need something, anything, to divert attention away from disastrous subjects like Northern Rock. Yet another set of ?we?re no pushover, we mean business’ measures were announced last week by the Home minister and Gordon Brown. This one’s got something to do with immigrants being made to ‘earn’ citizenship, and generally guaranteed to be so complex that this country will need more immigration lawyers than plumbers very soon. Usually, I don’t even try to follow the continuous changes, visitors visas, English, fingerprinting that the Home Office announces (and re-announces, each time with a hike in fees) every other week as Britain edges closer to general elections. Mostly, I ignore it because they either make me seriously mad; or want to fall off my chair laughing. To cut a very long story short, ...
More About: Culture , Expat

DEOBAND INITIATIVE
2008-03-21 07:30:00
The ulama of the Dar al-ulum at Deoband were the symbols of political radicalism during the anti -colonial struggle in the subcontinent. Most of them were aligned with the Indian National Congress and rejected the two- nation theory. Today, however, the ‘loyalty’ of the same institution is in doubt. In the eyes of its detractors, the seminary at Deobandis supposed to train jehadis or terrorists. Last week, the turbaned men with flowing gowns gathered in Deoband to dispel such false impressions. They put up an impressive show. Their message was loud and clear; first, Islam is unequivocally opposed to the indiscriminate use of violence; second Muslim institutions had no links whatsoever with terrorist groups; finally, Muslims were fully behind the Indian state in its fight against terror. The ulama have done well to take an unequivocal stand, particularly because they have been targeted in the print and electronic media for nurturing the monster of terrorism...
More About: Culture , Initiative

SARABJIT MUST LIVE
2008-03-20 16:57:00
New Delhi has done well to indicate to Pakistan that executing Sarabjit Singh - on death row for his alleged involvement in the 1990 bomb blasts in Lahore and Multan - is not the best way to deal with the issue. Reports suggest that India has also sought consular access to Mr. Singh who has been languishing in prison for the last 17 years, and appears almost certain to be executed in April.   His family denies he was a spy as claimed by Pakistan and insists he accidentally strayed into Pakistani territory. When Pakistan’s Supreme Court rejected his plea for clemency in March 2006, Mr. Singh apparently sent a mercy petition to President Pervez Musharraf, seeking release on the grounds that he was innocent and wrongly implicated. Indeed, from all accounts, it does seem he was just a poor farmer who strayed from his border village into Pakistan and became a victim of mistaken identity. It appears a reprieve for Mr. Singh, even at this eleventh hour, could be possible if the Indi...
More About: Culture , Live

AVOID TAX CASCADES
2008-03-20 07:25:00
Growth means change and pro-active change does involve taking calculated risks for the greater good. Consider, for instance, policy change and reform, which is key to India sustaining the economic growth momentum. The Budget needs to draw up a road map for tax reform and attendant operational changes in vital sectors like banking and financial services. As the recent high powered committee on making Mumbai an international financial centre emphasised, we have indeed dismantled an “autarkic license permit raj” in industry and trade; but we need to do it again in finance. It would step up efficiency and productivity across the board, and lead to better allocation of resources. The way ahead is to have a tax regime in finance that does away with cascading rates, induding stamp duty, registration duty and the securities transaction tax. Instead, what’s required is sound tax design for a goods and services tax (GST) in finance. Given the practical difficu...
More About: Finance , Avoid

A Better System of Controls Needed
2008-03-14 16:46:00
The government says Indian banks had Rs 127lakh crore exposure to derivatives as on December 2007. This is sure to set alarm bells ringing, coming close to ICICI Bank declaring mark-to-market losses on foreign credit derivatives and fixed income investments and L& T declaring that it could be taking Rs 200 crore hit on its commodity hedges. Quantifying the exact risk is difficult, but it’s certain that the entire amount is not at risk. A substantial portion of the reported Rs 127lakh crore exposure is likely to be plain forex hedges. A large chunk of the headline figure are bank-to bank derivatives, i.e., a bank writing a derivative contract for a corporate does a back -to-back contract with another bank.  Nonetheless, the over 20% drop in the NSE’s Bank Nifty against the 11.5 % drop in the Nifty in the current month suggests that markets expect the worst. However, there is no denying that currency gyrations and widening credit spreads could cause serious problems w...
More About: Finance , System

AIR PRESSURE
2008-03-13 16:19:00
Show us someone who thinks that new airports are not the desperate need of the hour, and we will show you a political party that doesn’t care about Airport Authority of India (AAI) employees. With air traffic growing exponentially, it is a no brainer that expanding existing airports alone will not do the trick. Greenfield airports have to be built and built fast. In this context, the forthcoming inauguration of the two new airports catering to Bangalore and Hyderabad is welcome. But with the two new airports will come the closure of the two old ones. The AAI are opposed to this replacement scheme - something that had been decided upon by the Civil Aviation Ministry and the two companies, Bangalore International Airport Ltd (Bial) and GMR Hyderabad International Airport Ltd (Ghial). And there lies the crux of the agitation by some 20,000 AAI employees across the nation, who wants both old and new airports to be operational.   On the face of it, having both old and new airports...
More About: Culture

Movie titles to cost more
2008-03-12 19:25:00
You may have to pay a little more for the DVD and VCD. After a short spell of price cuts, home entertainment majors have deeded to change their pricing tack. Now, they will hike prices, despite the competition.   Less than a year ago, the entry of Moser Baer triggered a dramatic cut in DVD/VCD prices. While the low-price strategy of Moser Baer pulled the average price range in the market from Rs 250-400 to the Rs 100-150 mark, players have realized that this model is not viable. In the last six months, VCD/DVD prices for new Hindi titles have gone up. Even as players like T-Series, Shemaroo and others dropped prices significantly, there was surge in volumes. Tighter margins and high acquisition rights for titles are now driving home entertainment players to revisit the old strategy of higher prices. Shemaroo dropped its rates last year by 30% in the hope that volumes would make up the gap. However to ensure same levels of returns, we were looking at volumes going up by 2.5 times. Th...
More About: Bollywood , Movie , Cost , Titles

SAARE ZAMEEN PAR?..
2008-03-12 14:37:00
When you invite two irreverent superstars to be the Masters Of Ceremonies, at the 53rd Fair One Filmfare Awards, you run the risk that they will distract from the main event, in this case the presentation of the awards. When the duo is the notorious 52, Shah Rukh Khan and Sail Ali khan, there’s no uncertainty - you can be 100% sure they will steal the show. Of course the only competition for the duo were from the lovely ladies Preity Zinta, Priyanka Chopra, Gauri Khan, Deepika Padukone and Suzanne Roshan, among others dressed in their Chanel and Valentino gowns and Jimmy Choo shawls, holding their Gucci evening bags. The event started staidly enough, with compere Vidya Balan efficiently seeing the awards through the technical categories. But as soon as the S2 duo made their entry into venue, Yash Raj Studios, the event took a turn for the hilarious, After that, every award winner and quite a few of the presenters had their few moments of glory cut short as th...
More About: Bollywood

INDIA MUST NOT MISS THIS OPPORTUNITY
2008-03-12 14:34:00
In recent years, there has been a dramatic rise in international trade in services. But the gains so far are dwarfed by what the world could achieve. A recent World Bank Handbook of International Trade in Services estimates that if international trade in communications, finance, transport and business services is reformed, the benefits could be over five times more than those from the comparable liberalisation of trade in goods. Yet, there is a risk that the critical services sector will not receive the attention it deserves in current WTO negotiations, where agriculture and manufacturing have occupied centre-stage. For a country in India ’s position, this will be a tremendous opportunity lost.   India’s services exports have increased nearly fifteen fold from just $5 billion in 1990 to $74 billion in 2006. Export of business services - in which India has a particular advantage - have grown at a remarkable 25% per annum, faster than those of any other count...
More About: Finance , Opportunity , Miss

Why Blame Cricket?
2008-03-11 17:27:00
It was perhaps just as well that Sunday’s match where the UK knocked out India’s hopes of qualifying for the Beijing Olympics hockey event was played in Chile at a time well past midnight IST, when the fans back home were fast asleep. The sad spectacle of the UK brushing aside India’s past pretensions of being a hockey superpower would have been too much to take! It was evident from the earlier group game where the UK beat India 3-2 that our midfield trapping of the ball left much to be desired compared with our opponents. And so, for the first time in 80 years, India has failed to qualify for the Olympic hockey event. The blame game was on in full swing when one tuned in to the TV news-channels on Monday, with the most logical culprit being Indian Hockey Federation (IHF) president K P S Gill, during whose tenure the men’s national team’s performance has touched new lows. Two years ago, the Indian hockey team failed for the first time to reach the semi...
More About: Cricket , Sports , Blame

SECURITISATION OF INSURANCE RISKS
2008-03-11 14:30:00
Securitised risks have slid into a crisis of confidence and they have taken the financial market with them. There is a great deal of uncertainty around because players have invested in securities linked to US subprime mortgages without properly checking out the risks involved. Packaging risks, syndicating them and offering them on capital markets is still the right way forward. Capital has to be put to work and earn us both prosperity and economic growth. What we are seeing in the current market is “teething problems”. Investors paid too little attention to a correct pricing of credit risks. Financial institutions assumed that the risk would not remain on the books for long and were over-reliant on rating agencies. Today’s developments are taking place against the backdrop of a relatively solid real economy as has been the case in the financial industry in recent years. Wherever there is excessive growth, misconduct arises. But as during the dotcom bo...
More About: Finance , Insurance

SANITY RETURNING TO MARKETS
2008-03-11 14:26:00
February has been a nightmare for the Indian primary market. From IPOs getting pulled out, issues not getting subscribed despite lowered price bands, deferred IPOs and disastrous listings, we have seen it all. Under such terrible conditions, it’s refreshing to see a well priced IPO come through, with a reasonable chance of getting fairly oversubscribed. Interestingly; Rural Electrification Corporation (REC) comes from the government stable and with the exception of Isec, does not have the privilege of being stewarded by any of the top five “blue blooded” investment banks. REC, like it’s primary market predecessor, PFC is a power sector financier. It has a reasonable track record and a healthy Return on Equity (RoE) of 20%. There are question marks over how it will access low cost funds to grow in the future as avenues such as 54EC bonds and ECBs may no longer be available. REC will have to find a way around these funding constraints. It is per...
More About: Finance , Markets

BIG STRIDES BY RELIANCE AND AIRTEL
2008-03-11 14:23:00
Reliance Anil Dhirubhai Ambani group company, Reliance Communications has consolidated its global telecom business under a new entity, Reliance Globalcom. This entity will bring under a single umbrella services such as its global voice business (including international voice calls), managing net-works for companies, Internet services and undersea cable systems that it single face owns under the FLAG brand. Further, Reliance Globalcom’s operations will be headquartered in London and will be headed by Punit Garg along with 1,000 employees. With the consolidation, Reliance Globalcom expects revenues of Rs. 5,279 crore in 2007-08 and FLAG will be rebranded as Reliance FLAG. It has plans to plans of coming out with an IPO in the near future, according to Garg. This consolidation is primarily due to the company’s need to bring together Reliance Communications different entities like its recent acquisition of Yipes Enterprise Services, FLAG and Reliance Communica...
More About: Culture , Reliance , Airtel

Let Banks Decide Home loan Rates
2008-03-10 15:53:00
The finance minister, P Chidambaram’s barely-veiled hint to banks to lower the interest rate on housing loans up to Rs 20 lakh is distressing for a variety of reasons. Notably because it suggests the government is determined to continue with the process of emasculating the banking system; a process set in motion with the farm loan waiver. For votaries of finandal sector reform - and the prime minister and the FM could once be counted among them - it is as if the dock has been turned back and the painstaking progress in moving towards a competitive banking system wasted.  The objective of the 1991 Narasimham Committee report on financial sector reform was to liberate the banking sector from the shackles of the command and control regime of the pre- reform days. And, barring a few hiccups, successive governments had followed its broad agenda. Till now, that is. The tragedy is that this is happening under a reformist prime minister and finance minister. Many would also question ...
More About: Finance , Banks , Home , Loan , Rates

PETRO PRICE HIKE: A DROP IN OCEAN
2008-03-10 14:09:00
The increase in retail price of petrol and diesel by RS.2 and Re. 1 per litre would reduce the revenue loss (under recovery) of public sector oil marketing companies by Rs. 840 crore in the remaining weeks of the current financial year. Inspite of the price increase, the under recovery on petrol is Rs.7.25 per litre, Rs. 9 for a litre of diesel, Rs. 19.89 in kerosene and Rs. 331 for a 14.2 kilogram cylinder. The government estimates under recoveries in the current financial year to be Rs. 71,800 crore. The increase in revenue from the hike in petrol and diesel prices constitutes a bare 1.2 per cent of the under recoveries. Sources said Finance Minister P Chidambaram opposed the petroleum ministry’s demand for a Re one per litre reduction in excise duty on petrol and diesel. Petro leum secretary M.S. Srinivasan said the under recoveries would have touched Rs. 90,000 crore, but for the appreciation of rupee against dollar and increase in gross refining margin in th...
More About: Ocean , Price , Hike