Top Headlines: Card tokenisation extended; no off-budget borrowing this yr

Business Standard brings you the top headlines at this hour.

Be Alert & Safe: PM Narendra Modi To States On Omicron Variant Threat

PM Narendra Modi in a high-level review meeting on Thursday on status of Coronavirus (Covid-19), Omicron, and preparedness of health systems said the country needs to be “satark” and “savdhan” in light of the new variant. The PM directed the officials to ensure that the health systems in the states, beginning from the district level, are strengthened to meet any challenge posed by the new variant. Read more 
 

RBI Extends Card Tokenisation Rule By 6 Months After Industry Request

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) on Thursday extended the deadline for wiping off card data on merchant sites and applying tokenisation by another six months as merchants and payments companies expressed their inability to meet the December 31 deadline. In a statement on its website, the central bank said “at the request of industry stakeholders”, the timeline is being extended until June 30, 2022. Read more
 

Centre not likely to go for any off-Budget borrowing this year

Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, in this year’s Budget speech, had said that she would discontinue extra-budgetary resources (EBR) funding for the Food Corporation of India, in a continued bid to clean up the central government’s balance sheet and end below-the-line accounting. As a result, the EBR provision for 2021-22 was just Rs 30,000 crore against Rs 1.26 trillion in 2020-21. 

But Business Standard has now learnt that even that Rs 30,000-crore provision remains unutilised and as a result off-budget financing this year can be negligible or even zero. Read more
 

How after a dream run, stock markets could see moderation in 2022

The equity markets had a dream 2021. Stock prices climbed to record highs. Initial public offerings (IPOs) saw their highest ever mop-up. New trading accounts opened at a pace never seen before. However, next year could be different because the buoyancy in the market — the underpinning factor — turns shaky owing to the unwinding of post-pandemic stimulus measures taken by central banks, the lingering threat of new Covid-19 variants, and rising concern over India’s expensive valuations. Read more
 

Few takers for Subramanian's theory that GDP collapsed before Covid

Criticism of the current official gross domestic product (GDP) series is not new. Many commentaries have put a question mark on the latest series since it was announced in 2015. The current series has a different methodology to calculate GDP and its various segments when compared with the old one. The current base year is 2011-12, while it was 2004-05 in the previous calculations. Read more
 

Ministry proposes fixed timeline for NCLT, extended look-back period in IBC

In a move to plug gaps in the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (IBC), the ministry of corporate affairs (MCA) has proposed robust norms against avoidance transactions, wrongful trading, and inordinate delays via changes to look-back period and fixed timelines for the tribunals to reject or approve plans, among other measures. The MCA has proposed that the IBC should provide the adjudicating authority with 30 days for approving or rejecting a resolution plan under Section 31. Read more