Apropos the report "Budget to help India Inc save Rs 25,000 cr in 2 years" (March 2), the actual savings on account of tax may be much lower than the figure reported, and thus, end up being eyewash. A 15 per cent allowance on capital expenditure investment in plant and machinery in the next two years will no doubt bring down the taxable income, but this allowance will not affect the book profits for the purpose of the Minimum Alternate Tax (MAT) calculation. This additional tax benefit, along with the existing depreciation benefits (including the additional depreciation in the first year), in all probability will make the taxable income negative or lower than the book profit. In such a situation, such companies will be required to pay taxes under provisions of MAT at 22.66 per cent on their book profits. Thus, effectively, the savings on account of tax outgo will be much lower than estimated or reported.Raj Bagri  KolkataLetters can be mailed, faxed or e-mailed to:The Editor, Business

Letters: Miscalculating MAT

Business Standard

This refers to the report "Women-run PSU banks may face HR challenges" (March 3). Without adequate planning, particularly on the HR front, this project could be a non-starter. An all-women bank set up in a Tier-I city may break soon and turn into a profitable undertaking, and in a Tier-II or a Tier-III town, while the objective may be served to a large extent, the profitability may get delayed. The government's hand-holding is, therefore, necessary for a longer period initially.I K Kilam  FaridabadLetters can be mailed, faxed or e-mailed to:The Editor, Business StandardNehru House, 4 Bahadur Shah Zafar MargNew Delhi 110 002Fax: (011) 23720201E-mail: letters@bsmail.inAll letters must have a postal address and telephone number

Letters: For the sake of women

Business Standard brings to you a snapshot of average current rates and unit sizes in localities that offer property in the price range of Rs 50 lakh -Rs 1 crore. If you are looking at buying real estate and your budget falls within this range, an idea about prevailing rates would come in handy. After metros and Tier I towns, we look at Tier-II and Tier-III cities

Realty check: Ahmedabad, Coimbatore, Nagpur, Vizag

Every Monday, Business Standard analyses one family's finances and suggests a suitable way forward

Case study: March 3, 2013

On death of a bank account holder, should the nominee produce a succession certificate?No. A bank should make the payment of the balance amount (held in an account) without insisting on a succession certificate, letter of administration, or obtaining any bond of indemnity. Documents that a nominee should produce are the death certificate, a written request with his identification and address proof.Under what circumstances, will a person have to it? A bank will demand a succession certificate only if the bank accountholder has no joint-holder or a nominee mentioned. However, while transferring the balance amount, usually the joint-holder is given preference over the nominee.

The Union Budget that was presented last week has made a major effort to resuscitate India's economy and shown greater fiscal discipline by cutting government expenditure in the current year and promising a lower fiscal deficit in 2013-14. Nevertheless, the Budget can and will be judged on various fronts  what it provides to the private sector; its effect on jobs, the social sector and the environment; and how much it cuts government waste. And in some ways an important prism through which it should be viewed is what the Budget will mean for India's external vulnerability. If India is, as so many fear, vulnerable to a crisis of some sort because of its balance-of-payments weakness, then the Budget should have given greater priority to fixing this problem, and reducing the current account deficit. Unfortunately, viewed from that perspective, the Budget has not done enough.The outlines of India's difficult current account situation are already well known. A sustained rise in the price of

Managing current account

Budget might have far-reaching effects on start-ups

Angels in India

Violent words in political speech will lower the national debate

Careful, Mr Modi

Budget documents are considered to be in the public domain once they are tabled in Parliament. But for the government, this public domain seemed to exclude the hundreds of newspaper organisations that need to analyse this complex exercise and, hopefully, make it more accessible for the general public. As journalists discovered, there were a limited number of Budget documents in Parliament, and they were told that the bulk distribution was to be from the Press Information Bureau (PIB) office. But the PIB office soon ran short, sending scores of mediamen into a tizzy. The authorisation slips for these documents that were issued a few days ago were also of no use simply because copies were not available. Some backdoor cost-cutting by the government?

Budget paper chase

Kolkata's Metro is in tatters, but the Railway Board, it seems, isn't particularly perturbed by this. In a typically ineffectual press release, the sort that is the hallmark of many government public relations departments, Kolkata Metro's communications chief, sent out an email last week describing Railway Board member (electrical) Kul Bhusan's tour of the system. The ordinary rider may have to contend with a crumbling and crammed underground system, but the Railway brass has no such problems. "He had a smooth, comfortable and cool ride in AC Metro," the release detailed, while also expressing his "satisfaction". Sounds good in a press release, but who's going to believe this?

Taken for a ride?

How did the, well, super rich react to the surcharge on incomes above Rs 1 crore that Finance Minister P Chidambaram announced in the Budget? Sad faces, dropped shoulders? No way, if the reactions of Indian industrialists assembled at the Confederation of Indian Industry's annual Budget gathering at India Habitat Centre were anything to go by. Four of them, huddled in front of one of the giant screens telecasting the event, exchanged smiling glances and shrugs when the tax was announced. "Expected," mouthed the head of a two-wheeler major to another who heads a health and financial conglomerate. So, for once, when corporate chiefs downplayed the so-called super-rich tax in their post-Budget reactions, they were not play-acting.

Untaxed by the rich tax

In an otherwise well-written Economic Survey, there is one recommendation that is puzzling. It says to promote growth "India needs to shift from consumption to investment by way of increased government and household financial savings". There is the aggregation problem in economics where the sum of the constituents is not equal to the total. Keynes demonstrated how increased saving at the level of the individuals will eventually lead to its decline in the total at the national level owing to a fall in effective demand for goods and services, output and income  the last resulting in a fall in total savings. He suggested fiscal spending to counterbalance this adverse result. What is needed is a proper balance between consumption and saving on the one hand, and investment on the other. Finding this balance is a challenging job but worth pursuing for policy making.A Seshan  MumbaiLetters can be mailed, faxed or e-mailed to:The Editor, Business StandardNehru House, 4 Bahadur Shah Zafar MargN

Letters: The economic balance

Apropos N Chandra Mohan's column "MGNREGA's second innings" (From the Ivory Tower, February 19), the writer mentions Raghbendra Jha and Raghav Gaiha's survey that showed the MGNREGA failed on three of the four parameters applied. Of these, their finding that the employment generated by the scheme is not translating into the completion of planned work deserves attention. The referred study points out that the trend for 2006-07 to 2011-12 shows an increase in budgeted fund utilisation and a decrease in the completion of planned work (in percentage terms). The nadir was reached in 2011-12 when the percentage utilisation of funds increased to 90 per cent, while the percentage of completed work dropped to 20 per cent. The budget for the scheme for 2012-13 is Rs 40,000 crore (Rs 2,000 crore more than that for petroleum subsidy) and, therefore, it is necessary that the welfare scheme is used efficiently in selecting the productive jobs to be done by the beneficiary, and getting them done as p

Letters: Incomplete work

A price index for agri commodities: A Business Standard and Indicus Analytics initiative

Indicus price monitor

As Table 1 shows, the government has struggled to control the fiscal deficit since the 2008-09 Budget  coincidentally, the last Budget before this one presented by P Chidambaram.

StatsGuru: 4-March-2013

Apropos the editorial Not the obvious solution (February 25), among other things, it states that ... meanwhile, a Reserve Bank deputy governor on short-term extension has been persuaded to finalise guidelines for the issue of new private bank licences that match the preferences of the finance ministry. According to news reports, he will be rewarded for playing ball with a full years extension. There is no factual basis to the inference drawn. First, there is no deputy governor on a short-term extension as the editorial states. Second, government guidelines for the appointment of deputy governors stipulate that: The deputy governor will be appointed for a period of three years. He/she will be eligible for reappointment. There need not be any mandatory age of superannuation.The recent notification of Anand Sinhas extension of appointment clearly states: Shri Anand Sinha... appointed as deputy governor, Reserve Bank of India... for a period up to 28.02.2013, is hereby continued as deputy

Letters: RBI dy guvs extension

This refers to Surinder Suds column GM crops: India falls behind (Farm View, February 25). The writers interpretation of the International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-biotech Applications (ISAAAs) annual report leaves a lot unsaid. Upfront, one needs to remember that this report is from a biotech industry group, and the discussion is based on its statistics, and not government or independent statistics. The pace of adopting genetically modified (GM) crops worldwide has decreased to six per cent in 2011-12 from eight per cent in 2010-11. Brazil alone contributed two-thirds of this rise. The number of countries growing GM crops has decreased from 29 to 28, and approvals in an additional 31 countries is the figure that has been bandied about in ISAAAs reports since 2009. In Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay, most GM crops are grown in huge industrial farms owned by corporate entities, which has nothing to do with small farmers, food security or farm-livelihood stability. The 11 per c

Letters: GM crops: The unsaid story

As always, the Railway Budget contained nothing that would ease the extreme and increasing discomfort of commuters on Mumbais local trains. One commuter was heard suggesting how this could be remedied. Let railway ministers travel during peak hours between Virar and Churchgate without any security and then read out the Railway Budget. That way, he reasoned, they would get first-hand experience of travelling in inhuman conditions and may be moved to spend money and add more trains for commuters in Indias financial capital.

Train of thought

On Budget day, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) called the press to its head office in Fort, Mumbai, for the first meet with newly appointed Deputy Governor Urjit Patel. This in itself was a surprise, since Patel has been assiduously kept away from the press since his appointment in January this year. But the bigger surprise was the unusually tight security. Journalists were made to stand outside the office in the hot sun before being ushered in for a security check that demanded photo IDs to validate their press cards. And all this for less than 10 minutes of standard comment from the deputy governor.

Much ado about little

Burning tyres, smashed buses and shop windows are fairly standard images of a political bandh or protest in India. But usually, the smashed equipment belongs to innocent citizens or the government. Raj Thackerays Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) set a whole new standard in protest vandalism. In its recent clash with the Nationalist Congress Party, MNS members coughed up around Rs 35,000 to buy a car from a scrap yard, only to set fire to it to demonstrate their protest.

Hire fire

Budget underestimates food, fertiliser subsidies

Business Standard

Business Standard

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Letters: Miscalculating MAT

Letters: For the sake of women

Realty check: Ahmedabad, Coimbatore, Nagpur, Vizag

Case study: March 3, 2013

Tipping point

Managing current account

Angels in India

Careful, Mr Modi

Budget paper chase

Taken for a ride?

Untaxed by the rich tax

Letters: The economic balance

Letters: Incomplete work

Indicus price monitor

StatsGuru: 4-March-2013

Letters: RBI dy guvs extension

Letters: GM crops: The unsaid story

Train of thought

Much ado about little

Hire fire