Finance Minister P Chidambaram has asked the Income Tax department to focus on the companies that pay less than effective tax rate of 24 per cent.

Know the companies that pay low tax

Business Standard

Heavy Industries Minister Praful Patel has said it was not a good time to sell profit making PSUs such as BHEL. BHEL is one of the three large state-owned players that were cleared for disinvestment over a year ago. However, due to various reasons including volatile market conditions these issues have not hit the market.

Have the good times come and gone?

Finance Minister P Chidambaram on Monday asked the tax department to go after low tax-paying sectors. The minister said though the applicable tax rate for companies was 30%, the average tax rate came to 24% and even lower.

'Below-average' taxpayers

Students in India mostly lack soft skills and are oblivious of the skill set required in a particular job. Tie up will not only help student in technical and soft skill but student will also see their goal from beginning and thus can orient their studies to gain knowledge. Besides, these tie ups will force university, colleges to update their syllabus as per the need of the industry. Students will also be able to involve themselves with the live project of the industry thus gaining first hand experience in that field. Thus it will help to generate more employable youth.

Students' corner

A basic health insurance cover would include coverage for hospitalisation and surgical treatments up to a certain limit. It is also possible that it might carry a co-payment clause. Benefits might not include critical illness coverage. Whereas, a comprehensive health policy offers coverage against hospitalisation, surgical treatments and critical illnesses. There is a possibility that all the benefits might not be covered entirely by a single comprehensive coverage. It is, therefore, advisable to choose between various insurance plans or opt for riders to make your health insurance cover complete.

General Insurance: Gaurav Garg

The European Central Bank closed a landmark meeting on Thursday with its chief, Mario Draghi, saying that &ldquo;the euro is irreversible&rdquo; and that the Bank would prop it up by buying &ldquo;unlimited&rdquo; amounts of bonds from troubled euro zone governments. This is a departure for the conservative ECB &mdash; though it has hedged its support of the besieged euro-zone periphery with conditions.

The world of recession

For the Indian Railways, the chickens are already coming home to roost, even though more than half the financial year still lies ahead. The national carrier has undertaken to cut investment expenditure across the board to make up for a revenue shortfall of over Rs 3,000 crore. This is mainly the result of current Railway Minister Mukul Roy rolling back key fare revisions announced in the Railway Budget. His predecessor, Dinesh Trivedi, had to step down and pay the price for defying his party leader, Mamata Banerjee, by revising fares, which had not been changed in years. In the process his efforts to turn the Railways around were nullified, and his successor has put the Railways firmly back on the path of inexorable decline.

Railways goes downhill again

The unrelenting criticism to which the government is being subjected over coal block allocations appears to have taken its toll on ministers. At the annual Automotive Component Manufacturers Association (ACMA) convention, Minister for Heavy Industry and Public Enterprises Praful Patel was reluctant to speak. As he ironically observed at the start of a brief speech, &ldquo;I won&rsquo;t say much because it seems we are the people who know the least. We are told everyday how the government should be run. Yet we have no views.&rdquo; After briefly touching on the auto component industry, he made the point that governments change but it is always the people who vote regimes to power. Ceaseless bashing, he insisted, only hampers the decision-making process.

Critical conditioning

Certainly, the current scandal over coal that has convulsed the media and stalled Parliament was on everyone&rsquo;s mind at the ACMA convention. In his speech &ldquo;Motorcycle Maharaja&rdquo; Pawan Munjal said as a child he recognised &ldquo;Colgate&rdquo; as a toothpaste that made your teeth white; with &ldquo;Coalgate&rdquo;, the association was with something dark. He also observed that mass hysteria has been caused by technology leading to the exodus of north-eastern people from south and west India. Yet it is this uncertainty, he claimed, that holds the key to future success. &ldquo;The future belongs to those companies who can embrace uncertainty and do rapid mid-course corrections in these times.

Change in black & white

Indeed, the change to which Munjal was referring has directly impacted him too.

All for sport

Apropos the issue of whether we need the cash reserve ratio (CRR) or not, Deputy Governor K C Chakarbarty needs to rethink his position that regulatory issues need not be subjected to debates. If the Constitution of India can be amended 116 times over 62 years, why can&rsquo;t we consider changing the regulatory framework? State Bank of India Chairman Pratip Chaudhuri&rsquo;s suggestion that CRR doesn&rsquo;t benefit anybody can&rsquo;t be denied. It&rsquo;s a well known fact that banks&rsquo; profits are under stress because of non-performing asset (NPA) norms, and the money locked up as CRR and statutory liquidity ratio.

Letters: CRR is not beyond debate

This refers to the controversial remarks made by both the Thackeray brothers on Biharis. Mumbai has a huge heart: it has accommodated industrialists like the Tatas alongside union leaders like George Fernandes. The city belongs to Gujaratis, Parsis and Biharis as much as it does to Marathis. A truly cosmopolitan culture should have enough space for people from across India irrespective of their regional identities. Perhaps the Thackeray brothers can learn a thing or two from Bollywood that is based in Mumbai and has accepted people from all over India whether they are Punjabis or Bengalis. It is high time the two leaders focus on more serious issues that ail the financial capital of India instead of inciting people by making provocative speeches.

Letters: Learn from Bollywood

Birla Sun Life Short Term Fund has been ranked in the top 30 percentile in the short term income funds category for the past two quarters under the CRISIL Mutual Fund Ranking methodology.

Fund Pick: Birla Sun Life Short Term Fund

Greeted with a lal salaam (red salute) by a comrade on the eve of a central trade unions convention this week, a veteran leftist trade unionist sighed and replied, &ldquo;It is no longer lal salaam, comrade. Maybe we can say peela [yellow] salaam.&rdquo; Red (the traditional colour of communism) was in serious danger of fading away, he explained, adding, it was already diluted after allying with trade unions representing all hues including saffron and the bonding has been going strong for the second year running. He then added that the unions were in peril, whether of red or any other colour. Anyone can sack 500 workers and we are not able to do a thing, he said gloomily.

'Peela salaam'

White churidar-kurta or safari suits have long been a mark of the Indian male politician. But the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) wishes to use white outfits to establish that its members, especially the chief ministers, are Mr Cleans. At a public meeting in Raipur over Coalgate, Rajnath Singh, the former party president, made the eccentric suggestion that Chhattisgarh Chief Minister Raman Singh should continue wearing white &ldquo;because a small blot will focus on the white colour&rdquo;. Now, the Madhya Pradesh chief minister normally wears white trousers and shirts, so he doesn&rsquo;t have to make much of a change. But it is unlikely that anybody else in the state BJP will wear coloured clothing any longer, lest they be accused of corruption.

Dress code

Foreign institutional investors (FIIs) have been worried about the rising debt levels of India&rsquo;s large business groups for some time. But their latest concerns focus on the presence of the chief of a major infrastructure group on the board of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), which regulates the banking sector. He was inducted last September for a four-year period. On the face of it, there is nothing unusual in this since chiefs of other corporate groups also serve on RBI&rsquo;s board, Azim Premji and Kumar Mangalam Birla among them. But FIIs have recently raised the issue of a conflict of interest because the group has a debt of approximately Rs 30,000 crore and an interest coverage ratio of 0.6, which means that the group&rsquo;s earnings are not sufficient to service its debt. True, the group is not looking at restructuring its debt so these questions are being raised pending its reported asset sales.

Across the board

Amazon&rsquo;s new Kindle Fire tablets aim to challenge Apple iPad&rsquo;s dominance in the market. Amazon has introduced devices that may not have all features of an iPad, but are attractive offerings in terms of price, display and size.

Amazon re-kindles competition

At the Common Admission Test (CAT) coaching centre, I teach English and Rajeev, Maths. This Wednesday, Rajeev had a class at 6:30 in the evening. Around 6 p m, I was in office making English material for a forthcoming test. Students started coming in at 6:20 and by 6:35 the class was full. No sign of Rajeev. 6:40, 6:45... Nalini, the counsellor, called his number but someone else picked up. We got seriously worried. Finally, at 7 p m, with students inspecting the door repeatedly, Rajeev walked in. Lo and behold, he was drunk. He could barely stand straight and when he walked, he shifted from one foot to the other. Nalini and I, the smiles gone from our faces, journeyed from disbelief to alarm in seconds.

Keeping up the spirits

The Global Competitiveness Report 2012&ndash;2013 comes amid slow growth in major centres of economic activity, particularly in large emerging economies and key advanced economies. The index seeks to provide insight and stimulate discussion among stakeholders on strategies and policies to help countries overcome obstacles to improving competitiveness.

Business Standard

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