Japan posted a current account surplus for the 17th consecutive month in November, providing support for Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s efforts to boost the world’s third-largest economy.
The excess in the widest measure of the nation’s trade was 1.14 trillion yen ($9.7 billion) in November, up from 440.2 yen billion a year earlier, the Finance Ministry said Tuesday in Tokyo. The median estimate of 23 economists surveyed by Bloomberg was for a surplus of 895 billion yen.
The surplus was supported by a rise in income from investments abroad by Japanese companies as well as a gain in services, which came with an influx of tourists after the yen weakened. The boost helps an economy that has been hurt by a slowdown in exports including to China, Japan’s biggest trading partner.
“The wider current account surplus bodes well for Japan’s economy,” said Junko Nishioka, chief economist for Japan at Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corp. in Tokyo. “Going forward, Japan will likely hold onto the surplus trend.”
Declining oil prices and recent gains in the yen, which may push down import prices and improve the trade balance, is expected to help Japan maintain the current-account surplus in coming months, Nishioka said.
The primary income surplus was 1.54 trillion yen in November, the largest on record for November, according to the report. The services balance had a surplus of 61.5 billion yen, helped by charges for the use of intellectual property rights and travel.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi with Emir of Qatar Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani during the welcome ceremony.
DOHA: With Qatar having the world’s third largest gas reserves and being India’s largest supplier of liquefied natural gas (LNG), both countries are expected to give a fillip to cooperation in the hydrocarbons sector .
Qatar has gas reserves exceeding 900 trillion cubic feet (25 trillion cubic metres) or 14 per cent of global reserves. It is the largest LNG exporter in the world.
The Gulf Cooperation Council member accounted for 65 per cent of India’s total LNG imports last fiscal.
India is also hoping to tap the Gulf nation’s sovereign wealth fund, estimated at $300 billion, for infrastructure projects.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi , who is visiting Doha on the second leg of his five-nation foreign tour, praised the role of the Emir of Qatar in promoting business ties with India.
Modi on Sunday also invited Qatari industry leaders to invest in India.
“India is a land of opportunity. I have come to personally invite you to take advantage of this opportunity,” Modi said, according to a tweet by India’s Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) spokesperson Vikas Swarup.
“Business First. For first engagement of the day, PM attends roundtable meeting with Qatari Business Leaders,” the spokesperson said in another tweet following Modi’s meeting here with business leaders.
“Qatar’s Minister of Trade and Economy welcomes PM Narendra Modi, seeks more intensive eco engagement with India,” it added.
This is the second prime ministerial visit from India to energy-rich Qatar in eight years after Manmohan Singh’s visit in 2008.
“It can also be a large economic partner as it has a large sovereign wealth fund,” Foreign Secretary S. Jaishankar said on Friday in a pre-departure media briefing.
Bilateral trade between India and Qatar stands at $10 billion.
Earlier this year, India re-negotiated favourably its LNG agreement with Qatar to bring down the cost of importing natural gas to less than $5 per unit from $12.
In return for the renegotiation, India’s Petronet LNG has signed an agreement for additional import of one million tonnes of LNG per year from Qatar’s Ras Gas for about 12 years with effect from January 1, this year, at the prevailing market prices.
Ras Gas will also not seek Rs.12,000 crore from Petronet for under-lifting LNG by 38 per cent.
The new contract is effective from January 1, 2016, and ends in 2028.
Modi addressed Indian workers at a medical camp in Doha on Saturday night. There are 6,30,000 Indians living in Qatar comprising the largest expatriate community in that country.
Modi, who arrived here from Afghanistan, will also visit Switzerland, the US and Mexico during his seven-day sojourn.
FTA with EU: India to take up ‘stock-taking exercise’ for a free trade agreement with the EU later this month, after a gap of three years, and pitch for greater market access in services..
India will undertake a “stock-taking exercise” for a free trade agreement with the EU later this month, after a gap of three years, and pitch for greater market access in services once the stage is set for further negotiations, a senior commerce ministry official said.
Before engaging in serious formal talks on the EU-India Bilateral Trade and Investment Agreement (BTIA), a “stock-taking exercise” will be undertaken, as some contours of the earlier negotiations have to be altered, keeping in view the changes that have taken place since the talks were stuck in 2013, Arvind Mehta, additional secretary in the commerce ministry, told FE.
For instance, India has further liberalised many sectors for foreign investments, including some of the areas where the EU had interests, over the past three years. For instance, the FDI cap in insurance has been raised to 49% from 26% and 100% FDI is allowed in telecoms. In private sector banking, full fungibility of foreign investment is now permitted and accordingly FIIs/FPIs/QFIs can now invest up to a sectoral limit of 74%, with certain conditions.
While India feels the flexibilities shown by it in further opening up to foreign investments should be considered positively by the EU, it also expects some reciprocal measures by the 28-member bloc to address its concerns, especially on data privacy and market access in the services sector. However, there will be no binding commitments until India’s core concerns are addressed suitably, Mehta said. The BTIA negotiations cover boosting goods and services trade as well as investment.
India seeks a data secure status because the high compliance cost with EU’s data protection laws will hit small and medium enterprises (SMEs) of India and make them un-competitive.
Mehta said India will be betting for a trade facilitation agreement (TFA) in services at the World Trade Organisation — similar to the TFA in goods — that would focus on liberalised visa regime, long term visas for business community and freer movement of professionals for the greater benefit of both India and the world. India will pursue it vigorously in negotiations for the BTIA as well as Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership. RCEP is a proposed FTA between the Asean members and the six states with which it has forged FTAs, including India.
India is keen on services, as they account for over a half of its GDP. The EU is India’s largest trade partner, accounting for close to 15% of trade in both goods and services. It is a major market for Indian textiles, garments, pharmaceuticals, gems and jewellery and IT. The EU is also the largest source of FDI inflows to India, accounting for over one-fourth of the total. However, India ranks only ninth among the EU’s top trade partners, making up for just about 2% of its total merchandise goods in 2014.
BTIA talks were to be revived last year, but the EU’s surprise ban on 700 products of GVK shocked India, which then called off the negotiations. Prior to that, the negotiations centred around India’s demand for.
The EU is interested in further liberalisation of FDI in multi-brand retail and insurance, and closed sectors like accountancy and legal services. The underutilised private banking space in India is another draw. India’s intellectual property regime (IPR), which is unlikely to allow ever-greening of patents, remains a concern for European pharma majors. Moreover, the EU has been seeking a cut in the high import duties on assembled vehicles and wines and spirits. In case of assembled vehicles, the import duties remain in the range of 60-75%.
The Income Tax department’s ambitious OTP-based ITR filing system for taxpayers has crossed the 50 lakh e-verification mark, while more than 39 lakh Aadhaar numbers have been successfully linked with the PAN database after the scheme was launched over six months back.
The new e-filing system, operationalised last year, allows online verification of a person’s Income Tax Returns (ITR) by using either the Aadhaar number, internet banking, ATM or email, thereby ending the practice of sending paper acknowledgment to the Centralised Processing Centre (CPC) of the IT department located in Bengaluru.
“The e-verification of ITRs recently crossed the 50 lakh figure which is a testimony to more and more people and entities opting for electronic filing of their IT returns. While sky is the limit here, getting these numbers just when the new year has begun will enable the government to usher in more and more facilities for e-filing of ITRs in the new financial year begining April 1,” a senior official said.
The official, quoting latest data of the week ending today, said a total of 50,10,282 ITRs have been e-verified, while Aadhaar linkages with the Permanent Account Number (PAN) has been achieved in 39,66,149 cases during the same period.
The online ITR filing portal of the department is available at http://incometaxindiaefiling.gov.in.
According to the rules notified in this regard by the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) in July last year, any taxpayer whose income is Rs 5 lakh or below per annum and has no refund claims can straightaway generate the ‘Electronic Verification Code’ (EVC) for e-filing and validating their ITR through their registered mobile number and e-mail ID with the department. They get a system generated One-Time Password (OTP) to validate their ITRs.
However, this simplified option will be subject to certain “restrictions” which have been prepared by the taxman based on the concerned taxpayer’s “risk criteria and profile” on a case-to-case basis.
These new measures would completely eliminate the need of sending the paper acknowledgment called ITR-V through post to the Bengaluru based CPC.
In other options, those taxpayers who have activated internet banking facility can also do the e-verification.
Once logged in to the banking portal, the taxpayer will be sent EVC on his mobile number provided to the official e-filing portal of the department which they will put in their ITR for final submission.
The Aadhaar database is also being used by the taxman to verify taxpayers’ credentials.
The department initiated these new technology-based measures in order to fully automate the e-filing system and also to end taxpayers’ grievances with regard to their ITR-V not reaching by post which led to their returns getting rejected.
The entire direct benefit transfer (DBT) scheme for distribution of government subsidy is likely to be handled by the Post Bank — the new payments bank which will be under the Department of Posts.
The entire direct benefit transfer (DBT) scheme for distribution of government subsidy is likely to be handled by the Post Bank — the new payments bank which will be under the Department of Posts.
“Earlier initial capital approval sought for setting up Post Bank was about Rs 300 crore which has been increased to Rs 800 crore as there is proposal now that entire DBT scheme should be handled by it as well as saving accounts currently handled by DoP should also be moved under it,” an official source told PTI.
Public Investment Board (PIB) will consider this proposal in its meeting on January 15 and then send its recommendation to Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs for final approval, the official said.
The Reserve Bank of India has granted Payments Bank permit to the postal department, which has 1.55 lakh branches across country and already provides financial services.
Pilot for the Payments Bank is set to start from January 2017 while full-fledged operations are to start from March 7, 2017.
Under DBT scheme government directly transfer subsidies in to bank account of people eligible for it. Subsidies of around 35-40 government schemes are covered under it including that provided on domestic LPG connections.
As per official data, till December 27 around Rs 40,000 crore was directly reaching the beneficiaries through various schemes.
As many as 40 international financial conglomerates, including World Bank and Barclays, have shown interest to partner with Postal Department for the payments bank.
The DoP has shortlisted six consultants including McKinsey, KPMG, Ernst and Young and PricewaterhouseCoopers. The postal department expects to finalise consultant for setting up of payment banks by end of this month.
At the end March 2015, the DoP housed around 20 lakh saving accounts which held total deposit of about Rs 47,800 crore. The payment bank wing of DoP is also proposed to manage these accounts.
As per RBI guidelines, payments banks would offer a limited range of products such as demand deposits and remittances.
They will, however, not be allowed to undertake lending activities and will initially be restricted to holding a maximum balance of Rs 1 lakh per individual customer.
They will be allowed to issue ATM or debit cards as also other prepaid payment instruments, but not credit cards.
The I-T department in the recent times has taken a host of initiatives to reduce human interface between tax official and assessees and make the tax system non-adversarial
The income tax department is planning to carry out all communication related to the scrutiny of returns through e-mails from the next fiscal to reduce harassment of tax payers by eliminating interface between assessees and taxmen.
The I-T department, on a pilot basis, has already started scrutiny of returns through e-mails in 5 metropolitan cities- Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Ahmedabad and Chennai regions.
“We are working on a software so that all scrutiny communications can be stored in a specified server. Once it is ready, we will shift to e-environment as far as scrutiny, and all communications in this regard are concerned,” a top revenue department official told PTI.
The official further said that moving to e-scrutiny would help in combating corruption, as it would reduce the interface between assessee and tax officials. Also, he added that all the communication records with regard to scrutiny would be stored in one place and can be verified whenever needed.
“There has been an encouraging response to the pilot project undertaken by the tax department. From next fiscal we want to make all scrutiny communication through emails,” the official said.
The Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) has already asked the officials to initiate the concept of using emails for corresponding with taxpayers.
The I-T department in the recent times has taken a host of initiatives to reduce human interface between tax official and assessees and make the tax system non-adversarial. These include directing field offices to raise only specific queries in income tax assessment cases picked up for scrutiny. It also directed expeditious completion of those scrutiny cases where income concealed is up to Rs.5 lakh.
The department had also stipulated that appeals before I-T commissioner should be filed in electronic format by those assessees who e-file their returns.
Kolkata-based Primarc Group, which is into real estate and retailing, has set up a venture capital fund targeting start-ups.
According to Sidharth Pansari, Director, Primarc Group, the fund – Primarc iVenture – will look to fund start-ups at an angel stage or even at advanced ones.
“In the angel stage, funding will be between Rs. 5 lakh and Rs. 15 lakh, while in the advanced stage it will be Rs. 25 lakh to Rs. 1 crore. Focus will be on West Bengal-based start-ups, ones with social impact, or unique ideas,” he told media persons.
Pansari, however, did not mention the corpus of the fund.
Initiated some three months ago, the fund is controlled by the Pansaris, and has funded some 9-10 enterprises that include the likes of Ketto and Catapoolt (among crowd funding platforms); Sampurna Earth and iKure (among projects that seek to create social impact).
While there are no immediate plans to set up an incubation centre, Pansari said the group was also open to picking up stakes in companies (start-ups) that are a strategic fit with its core businesses of retail and real estate.
Such stakes may be taken up through the respective arms of the group.
Kolkata-based Primarc has an annual turnover of around Rs. 350 crore, most of which comes from retailing and real estate projects.
Currently, it has around 30-40 lakh sq feet of residential projects under construction, mostly in Kolkata and the suburbs.
