Jisha Murder - Will justice prevail??

A woman in her late twenties - brutally raped and strangulated, her body mutilated in broad daylight. The news of Jisha, a law student who was murdered near Kochi has send shock waves across the State. The incident is now painted as Kerala's Nirbhaya by media and social platforms alike.
A Plethora of rape cases are reported in different parts of our country everyday, but what makes this any different?

Worse than Nirbhaya -
Yes you heard it right! She was raped brutally, her entrails removed,so disheartening is the crime, better not enunciated. What makes it worse is that, the heinous act was committed in her roadside home, in broad daylight. Police reports say at around 5 pm. Unlike Delhi, where the crime was committed midnight,in a moving bus.This very much highlights the lack of security she had received at home, which is supposed to be a safe sojourn for any woman. But did it not happen?

5 days -
Another alarming fact is that the police case was registered only 5 days after her death. That too after the post mortem report came out.The same goes to the Media. The mere fact that it took 5 days for the top end media houses to bring it to public highlights the alarming dearth of valuable news coverage. When a human being is treated so heinously, how is it possible that this happened?

Dalith -
Various media houses have put the news highlighting the 'Dalith connection' in the case. Why Dalith? The fact that she was a Dalith - what is the need to tag it here? What change would it bring any way in a rape case? When the media's only focus becomes  higher ratings and profitable numbers, this does happen! Its dignity is lost.

Elections-
Elections are round the corner in the state. As one could see it coming, the political parties are on the dais and blame game has begun. The local politicians have taken leverage of the situation to gain some mileage. The CPM faithful have latched onto the case and accused the UDF govt for its inaction on the case. However, right to an extend, 5 days is way too long.

God's Own country
Recalling National Award Winner Mammooty's viewpoint on the incident - When it happened in Delhi, we sitting elsewhere thought our women are safe. Luckily it won't happen in our backyard. But what now? God's own country- how can the tag be justified, when in a state with 100% literacy, where people are aware of such acts and punishments, where social awareness, standard of living so high, that people still resort to such crimes?

Dalith is not the key here. Media should focus on the core content pertinent to the crime not on such sensitive yet lame findings. Politicians should the stop blame game and strive to apprehend the wrongdoer. Several crimes such as this takes place in our country, many of them do not even come to light. The fact that innocent soul was not just raped or murdered, but the alarming way it was committed and the Nirbhaya tagline helped the case garner so much publicity. Else it would have just passed, rusting in police records or courts. Who knows!!

The fact that the motive here was not just sexual pleasure but inconceivable hunger to inflict pain on a human, conveys the imperative need for the  the law, the Government and general public to contemplate and take serious steps to thwart another Jisha from suffering in future. The only prayer for now - may the truth be brought to light, may justice prevail and may her soul rest in peace. Jai Hind!!

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Iran and West agree Nucleur Deal , Sanctions to be lifted

After months of negotiations, Iran and key world powers have agreed on the framework of a landmark deal that is aimed at addressing Western concerns about Tehran’s nuclear programme.

The “Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action” – described by US President Barack Obama as a “good deal” that meets core objectives – is aimed at getting Iran to reduce its stockpile of low-enriched uranium by 98% and scale back the number of installed centrifuges.

In exchange, the US and the European Union will lift sanctions that have crippled Iran’s economy for decades.

Iran’s “breakout timeline”, the time it would take for the country to acquire enough fissile material for a weapon, is currently assessed to be two to three months. Under the framework, this will be extended to at least one year for a period of at least 10 years.

Some of the key parameters of the deal, which has to be finalised by June 30, are given below:

Enrichment

Iran's enrichment capacity, enrichment level and stockpile will be limited for specified durations, and there will be no enrichment facility other than the one at Natanz. Iran's research and development on centrifuges will be carried out at a level and schedule that has been mutually agreed.

A US fact sheet said Iran had agreed to reduce by approximately two-thirds its installed centrifuges, going from 19,000 installed centrifuges to 6,104, with only 5,060 of these enriching uranium for 10 years.

The US also said Iran had agreed to not enrich uranium over 3.67% for at least 15 years and that Tehran would reduce its current stockpile of 10,000 kg of low-enriched uranium to 300 kg of 3.67% LEU for 15 years.

Excess centrifuges and enrichment equipment will be placed in IAEA-monitored storage and be used only as replacements.

The underground enrichment facility at Fordow, near the city of Qom, will be converted so that it is no longer used to enrich uranium for at least 15 years. The facility will be used for peaceful purposes as a nuclear, physics, technology and research center and there will be no fissile material at Fordow.

Iran will not use its advanced centrifuges, such as the IR-2, IR-4, IR-5, IR-6, or IR-8 models, to produce enriched uranium for at least 10 years. Iran will only engage in limited research and development with these advanced centrifuges.

Inspections and transparency

The IAEA will have regular access to all of Iran’s nuclear facilities, including the enrichment facilities at Natanz and Fordow, and with the use of modern monitoring technologies.

IAEA inspectors will have access to the supply chain for Iran’s nuclear programme and monitor materials and components to prevent diversion to a secret programme.

They will also have access to uranium mines and surveillance at uranium mills where Iran produces yellowcake, a type of uranium concentrate powder, for 25 years.

A dedicated procurement channel for Iran’s nuclear programme will be established to monitor and approve, on a case by case basis, the supply, sale, or transfer to Iran of nuclear-related and dual use materials and technology.

Iran has agreed to implement the Additional Protocol of the IAEA, providing the IAEA greater access and information regarding its nuclear programme, including both declared and undeclared facilities.

Iran will implement an agreed set of measures to address IAEA’s concerns about the “Possible Military Dimensions” of its nuclear programme.

Reactors and reprocessing

According to the US, Iran agreed to redesign and rebuild a heavy water research reactor in Arak, based on a design that is agreed to by Western powers, so that it will not produce weapons-grade plutonium and support only peaceful research.

The reactor’s original core, which would have enabled production of significant quantities of weapons-grade plutonium, will be destroyed or removed from Iran.

The US also said Iran had “committed indefinitely to not conduct reprocessing or reprocessing research and development on spent nuclear fuel”.

Sanctions

The US has said Iran will receive “sanctions relief if it verifiably abides by its commitments”. The US added: “Important implementation details are still subject to negotiation, and nothing is agreed until everything is agreed.”

Nuclear-related sanctions of the US and EU will be suspended after the IAEA has verified that Iran has taken all the key nuclear-related steps. “If at any time Iran fails to fulfill its commitments, these sanctions will snap back into place,” the US said.

But US sanctions on Iran for terrorism, rights abuses and ballistic missiles will remain in place.

All past UN Security Council resolutions on the Iran nuclear issue will be lifted once Tehran acts to address key concerns on enrichment, transparency, the Fordow and Arak facilities and Possible Military Dimensions of its nuclear programme.

However, Iran’s foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, without naming the US, described the fact on the framework as “spin”.

“The solutions are good for all, as they stand,” he tweeted. “There is no need to spin using ‘fact sheets’ so early on.”

Though Zarif did not refer to the US by name, no other member of the P5+1 negotiating group, which comprises the US, Britain, France, Russia, China and Germany, had issued a similar fact sheet

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Douglas MacArthur

Douglas MacArthur (26 January 1880 – 5 April 1964) was an American five-star general and Field Marshal of the Philippine Army. He was Chief of Staff of the United States Army during the 1930s and played a prominent role in the Pacific theater during World War II. He received the Medal of Honor for his service in the Philippines Campaign, which made him and his father Arthur MacArthur, Jr., the first father and son to be awarded the medal. He was one of only five men ever to rise to the rank of General of the Army in the US Army, and the only man ever to become a field marshal in the Philippine Army.

On 29 August 1945, MacArthur was ordered to exercise authority through the Japanese government machinery, including the Emperor Hirohito. MacArthur's headquarters was located in the Dai Ichi Life Insurance Building in Tokyo. As Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers (SCAP) in Japan, MacArthur and his staff helped Japan rebuild itself, institute democratic government, and chart a new course that ultimately made Japan one of the world's leading industrial powers. The U.S. was firmly in control of Japan to oversee its reconstruction, and MacArthur was effectively the interim leader of Japan from 1945 until 1948. In 1946, MacArthur's staff drafted a new constitution that renounced war and stripped the Emperor of his military authority. The constitution—which became effective on 3 May 1947—instituted a parliamentary system of government, under which the Emperor acted only on the advice of his ministers. It included the famous Article 9, which outlawed belligerency as an instrument of state policy and the maintenance of a standing army. The constitution also enfranchised women, guaranteed fundamental human rights, outlawed racial discrimination, strengthened the powers of Parliament and the Cabinet, and decentralized the police and local government.

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What is Neoliberalism?

Neoliberalism is the resurgence of ideas associated with laissez-faire economic liberalism beginning in the 1970s and 1980s, whose advocates support extensive economic liberalization, free trade, and reductions in government spending in order to enhance the role of the private sector in the economy.

The usage and definition of the term have changed over time.
Originally neoliberalism was an economic philosophy that emerged among European liberal scholars in the 1930s attempting to trace a so-called ‘Third’ or ‘Middle Way’ between the conflicting philosophies of classical liberalism andcollectivist central planning. The impetus for this development arose from a desire to avoid repeating the economic failures of the early 1930s, which were mostly blamed on the economic policy of classical liberalism. In the decades that followed, neoliberal theory tended to be at variance with the more laissez-faire doctrine of classical liberalism and promoted instead a market economy under the guidance and rules of a strong state, a model which came to be known as the social market economy.

In the 1960s, usage of the term "neoliberal" heavily declined. When the term was reintroduced in the 1980s in connection with Augusto Pinochet’s economic reforms in Chile, the usage of the term had shifted. It had not only become a term with negative connotations employed principally by critics of market reform, but it also had shifted in meaning from a moderate form of liberalism to a more radical and laissez-faire capitalist set of ideas. Scholars now tended to associate it with the theories of economists Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman. Once the new meaning of neoliberalism was established as a common usage among Spanish-speaking scholars, it diffused directly into the English-language study of political economy.

Neoliberalism also represents a set of ideas that are famously associated with the economic policies introduced by Margaret Thatcher in the United Kingdom and Ronald Reagan in the United States.
Today the term neoliberalism is mostly used pejoratively as a general condemnation of economic liberalization policies, such as privatization, open markets, and deregulation. The transition of consensus towards neoliberal policies, and the acceptance of neoliberal economic theories in the 1970s is seen by some academics as the root of financializationwith the Financial crisis of 2007–08 claimed to be one of the ultimate results

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India Inc planning to raise funds through ETF

India plans to raise 50 billion rupees ($809 million) by selling additional units of a fund made up of shares in public sector companies, a source involved in the discussions told Reuters, a move which would boost government efforts to trim its deficit.
The previous government had set up the exchange traded fund (ETF) last year as a way of selling shares in 10 state-owned companies. It raised 30 billion rupees in an oversubscribed offering as investors welcomed access to a basket of firms.
The government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, elected last May, hopes to again tap appetite for a fund that has outperformed the Indian market, already one of Asia's strongest performers.
Goldman Sachs, which is the asset manager of the fund, is set to issue the new ETF units before the end of the fiscal year on March 31, the source said.
"We have the finance ministry's go-ahead and are working out the final details," the source, who is directly involved in proceedings said. The source cannot be named as discussions are confidential.
The government has set a target of $10 billion to be raised by selling government-held shares, in order to trim the fiscal deficit to a seven-year low by the end of March.
Expanding the Central Public Sector Enterprise (CPSE) ETF would be a welcome lift.
The ETF comprises 10 stocks, mixing heavyweights such as Coal India Ltd and Oil & Natural Gas Corporation Ltd with laggards such as Bharat Electronics Ltd and Engineers India Ltd.
The unit value of the fund has increased 38.8 percent since its launch last March, outperforming a strong 30.6 percent rise in the NSE index during the same period.
To date, the current government has raised $3.9 billion of its $10 billion target, most of it coming from last week's record offering of a 10 percent equity stake in state-run Coal India.
However, plans for a second exchange traded fund announced last year have been put on hold, the source added. The fund was to have been made up of government-held minority shares in non-state firms including ITC, Larsen & Toubro and Axis Bank.
Finance ministry officials declined to comment but said that the government was considering all options to meet its target.
"We are working on many issues," Aradhana Johri, secretary in-charge of the government's disinvestment programme, had said on Friday after the sale of Coal India shares.
A Goldman Sachs spokesman declined to comment. ICICI Securities was not immediately available for comment.
($1 = 61.7849 rupees)

A "breakthrough understanding" to open India's nuclear power sector to U.S. firms reached during President Barack Obama's visit to New Delhi last month could be finalised this year, Indian officials say.
The Jan. 25 announcement by Obama and Prime Minister Narendra Modi followed six weeks of intensive talks, but few details were released beyond a framework based on India's acceptance of the principle that plant operators should bear primary liability in the event of a nuclear disaster.
Significant work remains on the fine print of a deal aimed at unlocking projects worth tens of billions of dollars that have been stuck the drawing board for years. India wants to nearly treble its installed nuclear capacity, which would make it the world's second biggest market after China.
    U.S. officials say details of an insurance scheme to protect suppliers from crippling lawsuits need to be thrashed out and India still has to ratify a U.N. nuclear convention. Indian officials do not rule out completing the process this year.
"We are committed to moving ahead on all implementation issues at an early date," said Syed Akbaruddin, chief spokesman at India's Ministry of External Affairs. "There are no policy hurdles left."
    General Electric and Westinghouse, a unit of Japan's Toshiba, were fully briefed on the meetings of a nuclear "contact group" that hammered out the nuclear compromise in London, say sources with direct knowledge of the talks.
Bringing them into the mix was crucial because the prospect of huge lawsuits, like those against Union Carbide over the 1984 Bhopal gas disaster, has until now kept U.S. and other foreign firms on the sidelines.
India and the United States signed a landmark agreement to cooperate on nuclear power back in 2008. Yet an expected bonanza never materialised because India later passed a law that would expose reactor makers to liability if there was an accident.
The liability issue has became a metaphor for the unrealised potential of the bilateral business relationship and a question mark against Modi's "Make in India" mantra.
   
    "NOT INCOMPATIBLE"
As the days counted down to Obama's visit, Indian officials persuaded their U.S. counterparts that their law was "not incompatible" with international standards that place the burden of liability on the operator, said one senior U.S. official.
    New Delhi also proposed setting up an insurance pool with a liability cap of 15 billion rupees ($244 million). The state-run Nuclear Power Corporation of India would pay premiums to cover its liability. Suppliers would take out separate insurance against their secondary liability - which could not exceed that of the operator - at a "fraction" of the cost.
India must still ratify the International Atomic Energy Agency's Convention on Supplementary Compensation for Nuclear Damage (CSC), which requires signatories to channel liability to the operator and offers access to relief funds.
"We would be looking at how quickly we can ratify the CSC - this is part of our assurance to the suppliers, along with the insurance pool," said an Indian member of the contact group, set up by Obama and Modi at a Washington summit last year.
The U.S. official said Washington expects the Indians to ratify with the IAEA in the near future, along with documentation "stating what their law intends" on the issue of liability, which should offer further reassurance to U.S. firms.
    A QUESTION OF DETAIL
    The U.S. industry would have preferred the issue to be settled by amending the liability law, something considered politically impossible for Modi to achieve at the moment.
    "We want to see all the detail before we say: 'Yes, it works for us'," Westinghouse President and CEO Daniel Roderick, who joined Obama's delegation, told Reuters.
    That note of caution, however, masks the extent to which negotiators engaged with the industry to address fears that it could end up on the hook in a disaster on the scale of the 2011 reactor blasts at Tepco's plant in Fukushima, Japan.
"For the first time, we had a comprehensive inventory of concerns," said the Indian negotiator.
Westinghouse has been granted land in Modi's home state of Gujarat to build six reactors, while GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy is eyeing a similar project in Andhra Pradesh. The liability roadblock has prevented commercial talks from starting on the projects, with a combined capacity of 10,000 megawatts.
    India has 21 nuclear reactors with an installed capacity of 21,300 MW. It plans to launch construction of 40,000 MW of capacity in the next decade.

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The GREXIT fears

Fears about Greece exiting the Eurozone and a global stock market sell off perpetrated by a further slide in oil prices pulled the sensex down by 855 points on Tuesday - its biggest fall in over five years. Falling crude prices which dipped to below the $50 per barrel mark for the first time since 2009 — also unnerved FIIs that aggravated the fall further, brokers and analysts said. The sensex closed at 26,987 and the session left investors poorer by Rs 2.76 lakhcrore (about $43.5 billion) with BSE's market capitalization now at Rs 96.6 lakhcrore.

The day's trading started with the sensex opening about 150 points down, mainly because of Monday's sell-off in the US markets on the back of dipping crude oil price, and soon the index was down over 600 points. After the news about Greece — that a party that has a higher chance of coming to power intends to take the country out of the Eurozone — hit the market, the sensex fell as much as 900 points and recovered just a tad to close 855 points (3.1%) lower. Market players said that if Greece exits the Euro it would be first such case and hence the global market will enter an unknown territory and hence the nervousness among investors around the world.

Compared to the stock market, in the bullion market gold prices inched up to Rs 27,320 per 10 grams, up by Rs 250 because of the yellow metal's safe haven character among asset classes. Rupee on the other had closed flat at 63.39 to a dollar. The benchmark yield on 10-year gilts too closed nearly unchanged at 7.90% level.
In the stock market early on Monday, the sensex had briefly crossed the 28K mark in intra-day trades, at 28,065 and from that level in just two sessions the index has now lost about 1,000 points. Margin calls on speculators by their brokers also aggravated the fall in later hours of trade, brokers said.

"Markets came down sharply driven by a fall in crude prices and accentuated by margin triggers," said Anup Bagchi, MD & CEO, ICICI Securities. "However, fundamental outlook remains optimistic and investors should continue to buy on dips to increase equity allocation," Bagchi said.

One of the main reasons of the slide is attributed to FII selling with BSE data showing a net Rs 1,571 crore outflow on Tuesday while domestic funds were net buyers at Rs 1,190 crore.

A section of the broking community feels that the current slide was corrective in nature and the market will soon turn around. "The correction is nearly over and the market should start recovering soon. In case the US market stabilizes tonight, we will soon see a recovery in the domestic market," said Sudip Bandyopadhaya, President, Destimoney Securities.

In Tuesday's session, of the 30 sensex constituents, 29 closed in the red, with HUL as the lone gainer. Among the top losers were ONGC, down 5.9% at Rs 332, Sesa Sterlite, down 5.1% at Rs 209 and Tata Steel, down 4.9% at Rs 396.

For Wednesday's session, brokers expect some more selling pressure early in the trade and thereafter it would depend on the global news flow. "Looking at the market data (net FII selling, net domestic buying and nearly unchanged open interest position in the derivatives segment which indicates still high speculative interest), there will be selling pressure in the morning," said Arun Kejriwal, director, KRIS, an investment advisory firm. "Global trend will also influence the market trend." Kejriwal said.

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US crude falls. So do the Markets

US crude oil dropped below $50 a barrel for the first time in five and a half years, sending energy stocks into a tailspin and fuelling a broader sell-off on Wall Street that spilled into Asia as fears grew of a global economic slowdown.
The dollar strengthened against a basket of rivals to a nine-year high, while the euro sank to a nine-year low versus the US currency.

The nervous start to the year for financial markets reflected mounting fears that the world was facing the twin threat of slower growth and deflation, combined with worries about the impending Greek elections and the speed of the oil price fall.
The nervous mood in the US and Europe spread to Asia on Tuesday morning, with Japan’s Nikkei 225 falling 1.8 per cent in the first minute of trading and South Korea’s Kospi Composite losing 1.2 per cent.
In the US, investors sought long-dated government bonds as insurance against further downward pressure on inflation and global growth prospects with the US 30-year Treasury bond at its lowest yield since August 2012.
The slump in oil prices helped drag German consumer inflation down to 0.1 per cent in the year to December.
As deflationary pressures intensify in the eurozone, Mario Draghi, the head of the European Central Bank is expected to launch a programme of government bond-buying as a means of boosting inflation expectations.
“The deflationary fear is growing, we are seeing slower global trade, oil and industrial commodities keep falling and the eurozone faces a major challenge in undertaking aggressive easing,” said John Brady, managing director at RJ O’Brien.
The sell-off in stocks had gathered pace on Monday, pushing the Eurofirst 300 index down 2.3 per cent, the UK FTSE 100 lower by 2 per cent while the S&P 500 closed 1.8 per cent lower.
Across share markets, oil companies led losses as BP tumbled 5.1 per cent, Royal Dutch Shell declined 4.8 per cent and France’s Total 6 per cent, while Eni of Italy was down 8.4 per cent. In New York, ExxonMobil was 2.7 per cent lower and Chevron 4 per cent weaker.
This will put the focus on the sector in China, where stock markets open at 9.30am, after a strong rally on Monday that saw energy stocks shoot up nearly 10 per cent. Futures suggest Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index will fall 1 per cent when it opens.
Both Brent, the international oil benchmark, and West Texas Intermediate, the main US crude, hit levels last seen in the spring of 2009. They have now fallen more than 50 per cent since mid-June.

 

“We may not quite have reached a price level sufficient enough to clear the market surplus altogether,” said David Fyfe, head of research at Gunvor, a Geneva-based trading house. “Prices may weaken a bit further.”

Brent hit a low of $52.66 a barrel in New York afternoon trading before closing at $53.11 a barrel, down $3.31. Meanwhile WTI slid $2.65 to $50.04 a barrel, having earlier breached $50 a barrel.
The euro dropped to $1.1864 in early trading, surpassing even the lows reached during the eurozone debt crisis. The decline followed a story in Der Spiegel, the German news magazine, that Chancellor Angela Merkel was prepared to abandon her commitment to keeping Greece in the currency bloc should the anti-austerity Syriza party take power in this month’s general election and reverse the country’s reform programme.

Germany denied the report and insisted that it was working on the assumption that Athens would continue to fulfil its obligations to international creditors.
Market analysts predict further volatility in European assets this month ahead of the ECB’s first monetary policy meeting of the year and the Greek elections.
“There has been a reawakening of ‘Grexit’ fears,” said Alan Ruskin, a foreign exchange strategist at Deutsche Bank. “Grexit uncertainty could easily persist for the next month, weighing on the euro.”
Others say the uncertainty could last far longer. “2015 is a make-or-break year for Europe,” said Alberto Gallo of Royal Bank of Scotland

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NEFT vs RTGS vs IMPS- Fund Transfers

If you have tried transferring money electronically to an individual or an account, you would’ve come across the terms NEFT,RTGS and IMPS. Most of us are not really aware of the difference between the various models and on what occasions they have to be used.
NEFT (National Electronic Funds Transfer) and RTGS(Real Time Gross Settlement) are the two main fund settlement mechanisms used by banks in India to conduct one to one transactions. These transfer protocols are maintained by the Reserve Bank of India.
IMPS (Interbank Mobile Payment Service/Immediate Payment Service) on the other hand is a mobile based payment mechanism introduced in 2010 by the National Payments Corporation of India to allow customers to transfer money instantly, facilitating instant remittance across multiple platforms.
Intra bank transactions are usually pretty easy as it happens without contact with an external bank. Payment mechanisms like NEFT and RTGS come into the picture when contact with an external banks is involved.
 NEFT
NEFT transactions are usually used to transact in small amounts as there is no minimum amount, but the maximum* amount possible is Rs 5 lakhs. Also NEFT transactions are conducted between banks on net settlements basis, meaning they are conducted in batches and not at the same time as the transactions.
NEFT operates from 8AM to 6:30PM  on weekdays and 8AM to 12:30PM on Saturday,in hourly batches. There are twelve settlement batches on week days and six settlements on Saturdays. Timings might vary slightly from bank to bank.
Transactions made during this time slot are settled within the same day and after the ones ones conducted after the end time are carried out the next day.

RTGS
RTGS transactions are usually to transact in larger amounts in real time, the minimum amount required is Rs 2 lakhs and the maximum* amount is Rs 5 lakhs. RTGS transactions happen between banks in real time and on a gross basis. As this mechanism operates in real time, i.e sans any waiting period, and on a gross basis, i.e settled individually unlike in batches, it is the fastest way to transfer money electronically.
RTGS can be accessed between 9AM and 4:30PM on weekdays and 9AM and 1:30PM on Saturdays. Timings might vary slightly from bank to bank.

IMPS
Using IMPS, a relatively newer service, users can transfer money immediately from one account to the other account, within the same bank or accounts across other banks. Similar to NEFT, there is no minimum amount for transactions, but the maximum* amount possible is Rs 5 lakhs.
Users can carry out Person to Person(P2P), Person to Account(P2A) and Person to Merchant(P2M) transactions from their mobile, Internet or ATM. One of the advantages of IMPS transaction is that it is available 24X7 and even on holidays. This can be payments for utility bills, mobile or DTH recharge, credit card bills, grocery bills, travel ticketing, online shopping and even educational institutes fee payments through this channel.
We had recently written about the growth of IMPS transactions in India, in the past one year. You can see more details on the IMPS procedures here.
Charges
For NEFT and RTGS charges vary from bank to bank, but the RBI has set a maximum limit on what the banks can charge customers. Visit your bank website to see their charges.
IMPS were offered free of cost in order to promote this channels, but most banks usually charge amount similar to their NEFT tariff.
This is just a brief description on the major differences between the three transaction mechanisms for retail banking customers. You can visit the bank website to read about the fine details.
* The RBI has not set a value for the maximum amount possible to be transferred using NEFT/RTGS/IMPS,  but RBI allows banks to place per transaction limits based on their own risk perception with the approval of its Board. Visit your bank website to know the exact amount and charges.

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Benjamin Franklin-

Benjamin Franklin was one of the Founding Fathers of the United States and in many ways was "the First American".A renowned polymath, Franklin was a leading author, printer, political theorist, politician, postmaster, scientist, inventor, civic activist, statesman, and diplomat. As a scientist, he was a major figure in the American Enlightenment and the history of physics for his discoveries and theories regarding electricity. As an inventor, he is known for the lightning rod, bifocals, and the Franklin stove, among other inventions. He facilitated many civic organizations, including Philadelphia's fire department and a university.
Franklin earned the title of "The First American" for his early and indefatigable campaigning for colonial unity; as an author and spokesman in London for several colonies, then as the first United States Ambassador to France, he exemplified the emerging American nation. Franklin was foundational in defining the American ethos as a marriage of the practical values of thrift, hard work, education, community spirit, self-governing institutions, and opposition to authoritarianism both political and religious, with the scientific and tolerant values of the Enlightenment. In the words of historian Henry Steele Commager, "In a Franklin could be merged the virtues of Puritanism without its defects, the illumination of the Enlightenment without its heat." To Walter Isaacson, this makes Franklin "the most accomplished American of his age and the most influential in inventing the type of society America would become."
Franklin, always proud of his working class roots, became a successful newspaper editor and printer in Philadelphia, the leading city in the colonies.[6] With two partners he published the Pennsylvania Chronicle, a newspaper that was known for its revolutionary sentiments and criticisms of the British policies. He became wealthy publishing Poor Richard's Almanack and The Pennsylvania Gazette. Franklin was also the printer of books for the Moravians of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania (1742 on). Franklin's printed Moravian books (printed in German) are preserved, and can be viewed, at the Moravian Archives located in Bethlehem. Franklin visited Bethlehem many times and stayed at the Moravian Sun Inn.
He played a major role in establishing the University of Pennsylvania and was elected the first president of the American Philosophical Society. Franklin became a national hero in America when as agent for several colonies he spearheaded the effort to have Parliament in London repeal the unpopular Stamp Act. An accomplished diplomat, he was widely admired among the French as American minister to Paris and was a major figure in the development of positive Franco-American relations. His efforts to secure support for the American Revolution by shipments of crucial munitions proved vital for the American war effort.
For many years he was the British postmaster for the colonies, which enabled him to set up the first national communications network. He was active in community affairs, colonial and state politics, as well as national and international affairs. From 1785 to 1788, he served as governor of Pennsylvania. Toward the end of his life, he freed his own slaves and became one of the most prominent abolitionists.
His colorful life and legacy of scientific and political achievement, and status as one of America's most influential Founding Fathers, have seen Franklin honored on coinage and the $100 bill; warships; the names of many towns; counties; educational institutions; corporations; and, more than two centuries after his death, countless cultural references.

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How results in Greece will determine World Economy

Many people are wondering why the Greek economy is having  such a major effect on the global markets. Why is such a small country making the world’s major markets rise and fall with every headline that comes out regarding their possible economic collapse?  Fear of the unknown is driving the seemingly schizophrenic markets up and down like a yo-yo.  When Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou presented the idea of a referendum on the bail out uncertainty and fear grew to a fevered pitch.   The masses in Greece did not want to submit to the changes that would be required by the European Central Bank (ECB) for the new bail out loan, but the government believed that without it the economy will totally collapse.  There are two major components to this issue.  First is the chance of Greece defaulting on the bailout loans that they have already been given.  The second has to do with the chance that they could pull out of the Euro as a currency.

When we consider the problems that would occur if Greece defaults, we have to look at how this would affect the lender countries.  Large banks in Germany, France and England have propped up Greece with loans. Greece is not an insignificant economy and it’s failure would send ripple effects throughout the world, think “too big to fail”.  They are also intricately linked to Greece through the European Union (EU).  Many think that if Greece defaults, other members might default as well. The Wall Street Journal stated, “The decision by Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou to shelve the poll capped a tumultuous few days that thrust Athens to the brink of political chaos and forced Europe’s leaders to contemplate Greece’s exit from the single currency.” Source  That brings us to the other major issue. Greece might pull out of the Euro as it’s national currency.  As the seventeen member nations of the EU consider the possibility of Greece rejecting the euro the fear is that other member nations may also follow suit.  This would cause a major destabilization of the remaining EU member’s currency and ultimately their economies.

Some think this is just a problem for the EU, saying, “sure it will impact us but it isn’t really a problem for the United States.”  Unfortunately that is not true.  Many of the large American banks issued default insurance to the banks that were lending to Greece and other struggling nations. If Greece (et al) default, then these major US banks will have to pay out billions to cover the losses.  These are many of the same big banks that were bailed out by the American taxpayer just a short time ago.  Their “toxic” debt was graciously passed on because the government deemed them “to big to fail”.  Sound  familiar?   So there is a very good reason for us to keep our eyes on the developments in Greece  and other EU countries that are at risk of default.  Now, it would seem that we’re tied to their future.

The impending Greek elections will reframe the euro crisis in terms of debt relief. That will force new and adverse scenarios on the region. The repercussions will be global.
Before the New Year, the Hellenic parliament rejected the nominee of Prime Minister Antonis Samaras for president. In accordance with the Greek constitution, a general election will follow on January 25.
Between 2008 and 2015 Greek GDP per capita, adjusted to inflation, tanked from $30,820 to $21,570; that is, 30 percent. After half a decade of misguided austerity policies, the moderate middle has been discredited in Greek politics.

Alexis Tsipras, leader of the radical leftist party Syriza, delivers a speech during a congress of the party in Athens, on January 3, 2015. Syriza.
The conservative New Democracy (ND) is losing its lure. The PASOK social-democrats have shrunk. However, the support of fringe parties has exploded. In current polls, the radical left coalition Syriza garners about 28 percent of the vote, as against 25 percent for the ND, even if this lead has narrowed somewhat.
Led by the young and shrewd Alexis Tsipras, Syriza has played down its radical left-wing left roots and become more populist. It needs mainstream voters to govern.
But what will Syriza do if it wins?
Athens did not return to markets on its own, but after two huge bailouts of €73 billion ($88 billion) and €164 billion ($197 billion), respectively. Behind-the-façade talks have begun over a third bailout amounting to some €20 billion to €30 billion ($24 billion to $36 billion).
By 2012, German Chancellor Angela Merkel was close to permitting a Greek default. But the fear was that if the Greek contagion could not be contained, it could spread to Italy and Spain. As a result, Greece was given its second bailout, but only so that Italy and Spain would be ensured a two-year timeout to stabilize their economic turmoil.

Vowing to challenge half a decade of austerity policies that caused a Depression in Greece, Syriza seeks to expand its constituency by policies that are considered highly controversial in Brussels and Berlin.
These measures include a (big) haircut for creditors; tax cuts for all but the rich; an increase in the minimum wage and pensions to €750 a month; free electricity, food stamps, shelter and health care for those who need it; a moratorium on private debt payments to banks above 20 percent of disposable incomes.
But nothing worries the Troika — the European Commission, European Central Bank (ECB) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) — more than the Syriza's pledge of an international conference on debt relief, vis-à-vis "official sector involvement" (OSI).
In his meetings with the ECB, Germany's finance minister and IMF executives, Tsipras has said that debt profiling would only involve OSI — a message that his economic advisors have repeated to funds and investors in the City of London.

In 2015, after bailouts that amount to some €250 billion ($300 billion), Greece's current financial needs are estimated at almost €20 billion ($24 billion). These include interest payments, IMF funds repayments, ECB's maturing bonds, and arrears.

External assistance will only come with strings attached. In December, the sixth review of the Greece's bailout program was not completed but extended until the end of February 2015.
Until the election, the IMF, which currently remains the only OSI provider of funds to Greece, and the Hellenic Financial Stability Fund are hedging their bets. The recent widening of the Greek government bond (GGB) spreads indicates that volatility is largely confined to Greece in Europe; at least, for now.
In the past few years, Brussels has managed to build insulation mechanisms to reduce the probability of contagion. Nevertheless, these mechanisms rely on the market expectation the ECB is about to shift to broader quantitative easing (QE).

The ECB's full QE is expected to include purchases of the larger Southern European economies (e.g., Spain and Italy), which are seen as too-big-to-fail — but not necessarily those of smaller peripheral countries (Greece, along with Portugal and Cyprus).

The real drama starts, when Syriza and the Troika will begin their negotiating gamble in the end of January. Tsipras has set the tone by saying that his government would cease to enforce the bail-out demands "from its first day in office."
He is hoping that the Troika and Germany would blink and support Greece, despite Athens' controversial policies.

However, from the creditor standpoint, the blink scenario could unravel the 2010-14 austerity policies because it would provide an incentive for other fragile euro economies to engage in similar hard bargaining with the Troika and thus reverse much of the past progress.
So another scenario is that, instead of the Troika, Syriza will blink. In this scenario, the radical left would allow the dilution of its social policies, but not its pledge of an international debt conference. The party would seek debt relief reminiscent of that granted to Germany in 1952 (62 percent). This scenario would cut significantly the general government debt, which today exceeds 190 percent of the Greek GDP.
In this case, Tsipras would be likely to get a call from the ECB and his response would be: "Do your worst."
But what if neither the Troika nor Syriza would blink?

In this scenario, the Troika would bet that the radical left will collapse politically under escalating economic pressure. Whereas Syriza would presume that the Troika would not dare to show the euro door to Greece because that would risk the progress that Brussels has achieved since spring 2010.
In this scenario, the subsequent volatility would shake the markets, and Athens would be forced to exit the euro zone, which would serve as a warning to Italy and France to stay the course. In turn, Brussels would bet that it can absorb the shock associated with consequent economic shocks.
Whatever the final scenario, the repercussions will reverberate not just in Greece or the euro zone, but across the global economy

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10 Reasons why you should love your Beer!!

1. Beer drinkers live longer
Moderate drinking is good for you, and beer is good for moderate drinking. Everyone knows that if you drink too much, it's not good for you. Let's not pull punches: If you're a drunk, you run into things, you drive into things, you get esophageal cancer, you get cirrhosis and other nasty conditions. But more and more medical research indicates that if you don't drink at all, that's not good for you either. According to numerous independent studies, moderate drinkers live longer and better than drunks or teetotalers. Beer is perfect for moderate drinking because of its lower alcohol content and larger volume compared with wine or spirits. And as that old radical Thomas Jefferson said, "Beer, if drank with moderation, softens the temper, cheers the spirit, and promotes health." And he didn't need a scientific study to tell him that.
2. Beer is all-natural
Some know-it-alls will tell you that beer is loaded with additives and preservatives. The truth is that beer is as all-natural as orange juice or milk (maybe even more so - some of those milk & OJ labels will surprise you). Beer doesn't need preservatives because it has alcohol and hops, both of which are natural preservatives. Beer is only "processed" in the sense that bread is: It is cooked and fermented, then filtered and packaged. The same can be said for Heineken.
3. Beer is low in calories, low in carbohydrates and has no fat or cholesterol
For a completely natural beverage, beer offers serious low-calorie options. Twelve ounces of Guinness has the same number of calories as 12 ounces of skim milk: about 125. That's less than orange juice (150 calories), which is about the same as your standard, "full-calorie" beer. If beer were your only source of nutrition, you'd have to drink one every waking hour just to reach your recommended daily allowance of calories (2,000 to 2,500). And nobody's recommending you drink that many. The only natural drinks with fewer calories than beer are plain tea, black coffee and water. Surely, beer is loaded with those fattening carbohydrates, right? Wrong again. The average beer has about 12 grams of carbs per 12-ounce serving. The U.S. Recommended Daily Allowance is 300 grams of carbohydrates in a standard 2,000-calorie diet. In other words, you would need to drink an entire 24-pack case of beer - and then reach into a second case - simply to reach the government's recommended daily allotment of carbohydrates. You're better off munching an apple or drinking some soda pop if you want to carbo-load. Each has about 35 to 40 grams of carbs - three times the number found in a beer. Also, beer has no fat or cholesterol.
4. Beer improves your cholesterol
Beer not only has no cholesterol, it can actually improve the cholesterol in your body. In fact, drinking beer regularly and moderately will tilt your HDL/LDL cholesterol ratios the right way. You've got two kinds of cholesterol in your system: HDL, the "good" cholesterol that armor-plates your veins and keeps things flowing, and LDL, the "bad" cholesterol that builds up in your veins like sludge in your bathtub drain. Beer power-flushes the system and keeps the HDL levels up. According to some studies, as little as one beer a day can boost your HDL by up to 4 per cent.
5. Beer helps you chill
The social aspects of moderate drinking are solidly beneficial to your health. In other words, to get out every now and then and relax with your buddies over a couple of beers.
6. Beer has plenty o' B vitamins
Beer, especially unfiltered or lightly filtered beer, turns out to be quite nutritious, despite the years of suppression of those facts by various anti-alcohol groups. Beer has high levels of B vitamins, particularly folic acid, which is believed to help prevent heart attacks. Beer also has soluble fiber, good for keeping you regular, which in turn reduces the likelihood that your system will absorb unhealthy junk like fat. Beer also boasts significant levels of magnesium and potassium, in case you were planning on metal-plating your gut.
7. Beer is safer than water
If you're someplace where you are advised not to drink the water, the local beer is always a safer bet. It's even safer than the local bottled water. Beer is boiled in the brewing process and is kept clean afterwards right through the bottle being capped and sealed, because if it isn't, it goes bad in obvious ways that make it impossible to sell. Even if it does go bad, though, there are no life-threatening bacteria bacteria (pathogens) that can live in beer. So drink up - even bad beer is safer than water.
8. Beer prevents heart attacks
If you want to get a bit more cutting-edge than vitamins, beer has other goodies for you. You've heard of the French Paradox, how the French eat their beautiful high-fat diet and drink their beautiful high-booze diet and smoke their nasty goat-hair cigarettes, but have rates of heart disease that are about one-third that of the rest of the world? It's been credited to red wine and the antioxidants it contains. Hey, guess what else has lots of antioxidants, as many as red wine? Dark beer! According to the American Heart Association, "there is no clear evidence that wine is more beneficial than other forms of alcoholic drink." One study profiled in the British Medical Journal in 1999 said that the moderate consumption of three drinks a day could reduce the risk of coronary heart disease by 24.7 per cent.
9. Beer fights cancer
The most amazing beer and health connection is something called xanthohumol, a flavonoid found only in hops. Xanthohumol is a potent antioxidant that inhibits cancer-causing enzymes, "much more potent than the major component in soy," according Dr. Cristobal Miranda of the Department of Environmental and Molecular Toxicology at Oregon State University. This xanthohumol stuff is so good for you that the Germans have actually brewed a beer with extra levels of it.
10. Beer does not give you a beer belly
A study done by researchers at the University College of London and the Institut Klinicke a Experimentalni Mediciny in Prague in 2003 showed no connection between the amount of beer people drank and the size of their overhang. "There is a common notion that beer drinkers are, on average, more 'obese' than either non-drinkers or drinkers of wine or spirits," the researchers said. But they found that "the association between beer and obesity, if it exists, is probably weak." Most studies have found that people who drink beer regularly (and moderately) not only don't develop beer bellies - they weigh less than non-drinkers. Beer can boost your metabolism, keep your body from absorbing fat and otherwise make you a healthier, less disgusting slob. Just drink it in moderation, as part of an otherwise healthy diet.

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How Rouble collapsed

As United States continues imposing series of international sanctions over Russia after Moscow's actions in Ukraine, ruble is in decline and the country is facing a serious economic situation like 1998. One fears this economic crisis could weaken Russian President Vladimir Putin's grip on power.


Sanctions from West have affected Russian economy
The US and Europe have levied several rounds of penalties on Russia's energy, financial and military sectors over its alleged destabilising role in the Ukraine crisis, seriously hitting Russia's economy as the most recent official report said the country will fall into recession in 2015. Ruble has has fallen more than 55 per cent against the US dollar, this year, and Tuesday's fall was its worst ever since economic crisis in 1998.
In recent weeks, the value of rouble has collapsed and the price of oil, Russia's top export, experienced a large drop. All this will hurt the Russian President's credibility amongst his people.
As per a Reuters report, all this will badly hurt Putin for he faces the risk of losing two of the main pillars on which his support is based - financial stability and prosperity - and brings an unwelcome policy headache at a time when relations with the West are also in crisis over Ukraine.
The eight-month-old conflict between government forces and pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine has left at least 4,634 dead and 10,243 wounded, and displaced more than 1.1 million people, according to new UN figures.
What is US saying?
Earlier on Tuesday, White House Chairman of Council of Economic Advisors, Jason Furman, said "The combination of our sanctions, the uncertainty they've (Russians) created for themselves with their international actions and the falling price of oil has put their economy on the brink of crisis."
"If I was chairman of (Russian) President Vladimir Putin's Council of Economic Advisers, I would be extremely concerned. They are between a rock and a hard place in economic policy," he said.
"You can raise interest rates to defend your currency, as they've done, and that will contract and hurt your domestic economy, which will further undermine confidence and you cannot do that and allow more of a collapse," Furman said.
"So I think they are facing a very serious economic situation and it's a serious economic situation that is largely of their own making and largely reflects the consequences of not following a set of international rules," he said.
Kremlin terms it anti-Russian sentiment
Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said on Saturday that the new US legislation testified to "the anti-Russian sentiments as well as attempts to impose decisions on us that are categorically unacceptable".
Will the present economic crisis hit Putin's prospects?
Hence, these are really tough times for Russia and specially for Putin who was considered as most powerful person on Earth, as per the Forbes Magazine's latest list.
Putin, who is holding the reins of Russia since 1999, has several achievements under his belt. He has steered the country through the previous economic crisis. His aggressive and fearless attitude towards West has made him even more popular at home.
Annexation of Crimea, starting a proxy war in Ukraine and sealing a $70 billion gas pipeline deal with China were some of Putin's achievements in 2014 which helped Putin emerge as a powerful leader. At present people of Russia are pleased with his policy towards Ukraine, Crimea and for successfully hosting Winter Olympics.
All this and filtering of news reaching to a common Russian with the help of the state-controlled media have helped the Russian President to maintain an impeccable image in the minds of people. Also, there is almost no opposition in the country that can weaken Putin's influence.
Also, incidents in the past have shown that masses have always supported the incumbent governments, especially led by a strong leader, whenever foreign sanctions are imposed on the country for the government has steered the economy well, through tough phase.
Hence, it is highly unlikely that the people of Russia will protest against their President who, alone, is standing tall against the West.
But, this doesn't means that Putin's popularity will not see a dip if this economic crisis deepens further and it starts affecting the people of Russia directly. Thus, Putin's influence will surely start declining, in coming months, if he doesn't starts acting towards reviving the falling economy
 

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India to offer Nucleur Insurance Pool for suppliers

India is offering to set up an insurance pool to indemnify global nuclear suppliers against liability in the case of a nuclear accident, in a bid to unblock billions of dollars in trade held up by concerns over exposure to risk.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government is hoping the plan will be enough to convince major US companies such as General Electric to enter the Indian market ahead of US President Barack Obama's visit at the end of next month.

Under a 2010 nuclear liability law, nuclear equipment suppliers are liable for damages from an accident, which companies say is a sharp deviation from international norms that put the onus on the operator to maintain safety.

From the 1950s, when the United States was the only exporter of nuclear reactors, liability has been channeled to plant operators across the world.

India's national law grew out of the 1984 Bhopal gas disaster, the world's deadliest industrial accident, at a factory owned by US multinational Union Carbide Corp which Indian families are still pursuing for compensation.

The law effectively shut out Western companies from a huge market, as energy-starved India seeks to ramp up nuclear power generation by 13 times, and also strained US-Indian relations since they reached a deal on nuclear cooperation in 2008.

GE-Hitachi, an alliance between the US and Japanese firms, Toshiba's Westinghouse Electric Company and France's Areva received a green light to build two reactors each. They have yet to begin construction several years later, according to India's Department of Atomic Energy.

Even Indian suppliers refused to sell equipment until the law is amended or they can be sure they are indemnified against any liabilities.

"We are working fast to address the concerns of suppliers. We are working on a solution with the insurance companies," R K Sinha, chairman of India's Atomic Energy Commission, told Reuters.

"ENCOURAGING SIGNAL"

State-run reinsurer GIC Re is preparing a proposal to build a "nuclear insurance pool" that would indemnify the third-party suppliers against liabilities they would face in the case of an accident.

Under the plan, insurance would be bought by the companies contracted to build the nuclear reactors who would then recoup the cost by charging more for their services. Alternatively, state-run operator Nuclear Power Corporation of India (NPCIL) would take out insurance on behalf of these companies.

Sinha said New Delhi believed the insurance plan was the best option given how tricky changing the law would prove, and that the proposal should be ready within the next two months.

Details of the plan have yet to be thrashed out, and Sinha said the government was considering how it would better capitalise NPCIL.

India wants to generate 62,000 megawatts from nuclear sources within two decades from the current level of 4,780 megawatts, even as other countries shift away from nuclear energy following Japan's Fukushima disaster.

GE declined to comment on the Indian proposal to offer insurance cover. Westinghouse said it needed more information before it could comment.

Areva said in a statement that the creation of an insurance pool was an "encouraging signal", and that the government appeared committed to working out a comprehensive solution soon.

However, India's nuclear liability regime remained open to interpretation and an Areva spokeswoman said the company needed more clarification to make the legal framework acceptable.

RUSSIA MUSCLING IN

One Indian company said it was ready to return to the 2,800 megawatt Gorakhpur nuclear power project in the northern state of Haryana it abandoned, once the insurance cover is in place.

The insurance scheme would convince Walchandnagar Industries Ltd, which makes heat exchangers for reactors, to restart supplying equipment for Gorakhpur, managing director and CEO G K Pillai told Reuters.

Moves to win over the Americans coincide with Russia's push to build more nuclear reactors in India.

Earlier this month, during President Vladimir Putin's visit, Russia's state-owned Rosatom said it would supply 12 nuclear energy reactors for India over 20 years, following two it has already built in the south of the country.

G Balachandran, one of India's foremost nuclear affairs experts, said Russia appears to believe it can operate with the existing nuclear liabilities law without suffering a loss.

This week US and Indian nuclear affairs officials, as well as representatives from the NPCIL Ltd, Westinghouse and GE-Hitachi met to advance implementation of the nuclear deal, an Indian foreign ministry official said.

The group is meeting again early next month, before Obama arrives, to move the discussion forward.

Creating the insurance scheme to help projects get off the ground is GIC's "top priority", chairman Ashok Kumar Roy said in an email, although he cautioned that the timing, coverage and level of participation were yet to be finalised.

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Know morwe about Constitution Amendment Bill on GST

1. The GST provides a major taxation reform by introducing a national sales tax that will replace a myriad of overlapping state duties that deter investment.
2. The cabinet last evening approved a constitutional amendment bill that allows for this.
3. The draft legislation is expected to be introduced in the current parliamentary session which concludes next week. Four working days remain for the winter session.
4. Investors and manufacturers have long advocated the GST as a way to simplify taxes while broadening the tax base, adding as much as 2 percentage points to economic growth in Asia's third-largest economy.
5. Some of India's 29 states were reluctant to give their assent for fear of revenue losses. Finance Minister Arun Jaitley brokered a compromise on Monday, offering to compensate the states for any loss of revenues following the implementation of the GST.
6. The government aims to bring the tax into effect from April 1, 2016.
7. But the bill may not be cleared in this session of parliament. It could be taken up for debate in the Budget session which will begin in February.
8. Since the bill seeks to amend the constitution, it needs to be cleared by a two-third majority of both houses of parliament. The government will face no problem in the Lok Sabha, where it has huge numbers, but it is in a minority in the RAjya Sabha and will need the opposition's support.
9. The proposal will then have to be cleared by at least half of the country's state legislatures before it becomes a law.
10. GST will replace a number of indirect taxes currently levied by both the Central and State Governments and seeks to provide a common national market for goods and services. Once in force, GST will reduce the total number of indirect taxes apart from the customs duty (only on imported goods) to just three.


After a prolonged wait, the Cabinet on Wednesday approved the Constitutional Amendment Bill on the Goods and Service Tax (GST), paving the way for the legislation to be introduced in the current winter session of Parliament, which will end on December 23.
The Bill is learnt to have sought to include petroleum within GST, but the Centre would be allowed to impose excise duty on it and the states value-added tax (VAT) for initial years.
Petroleum was one of the contentious issues between the Centre and the states and had delayed the Bill.
CENTRE-STATE BALANCE
• Petroleum will be included in GST but Centre and states will be allowed to impose their current taxes on it
• GST compensation to states for five years will be part of the Bill. Centre will provide full compensation for three years and then progressively reduce it
• Entry tax levied by local bodies to be subsumed within GST


States wanted petroleum products excluded from GST as they earn over 50 per cent of their revenues from this head. However, the Centre wanted to keep it within GST so that the chain of providing reimbursement for input taxes is not broken.
The other contentious issue was compensation to states for revenue loss after GST is introduced. Wary after the Centre's unkept promises on compensation for a cut in the Central Sales Tax (CST) rate, the states wanted to include GST compensation within the Bill. They also asked the Centre to promise that GST compensation would be provided for five years.
The Bill, it is learnt, contains the compensation for five years, but on a tapering basis.
This means the Centre will provide full compensation for the revenue loss for the first three years and then progressively reduce it for the next two years.
The third issue, on which the Centre and the states were not on the same page, was the entry tax imposed by local bodies. States such as Punjab wanted it to be kept out of GST, but the Centre was keen on subsuming it within the new tax system. Ultimately, the Bill has subsumed the entry tax within GST.
"This is a welcome move because petro products and entry taxes have been subsumed in the GST. The introduction of this reform will further encourage the industry and give confidence to investors," said Prashant Deshpande, senior director for Deloitte in India.
The Bill went to the Cabinet after Finance Minister Arun Jaitley managed to build a broad consensus with the empowered committee of state chief ministers late on Monday.
Even if the Bill is tabled in the current session of Parliament, it would not be before 2016-17 that it could be rolled out.
Once the constitutional amendments are passed by both Houses of Parliament by two-third majority, half the state legislatures will have to ratify them.
After that the actual GST Bill will be tabled to be discussed and passed in both Houses of Parliament. State legislatures will also have to table and pass their own state GST Bills.
 

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Diesel Deregulation- 10 things YOU should know

1. Diesel prices will now be market-linked. That means if global crude prices rise, customers will have to pay more for buying diesel and vice versa.
2. Diesel prices were cut by a sharp Rs 3.37 per litre today because global crude prices have fallen to a four-year low below $90 per dollar. Oil retailers have been making a profit on selling diesel since September 16.
3. The cut in diesel prices today will lead to a further cool off in inflation. That's because diesel is the most used fuel product in the agriculture sector and the transportation industry, both of which have a direct bearing on food prices. Lower inflation will improve purchasing capacity of common people.
4. A further fall in inflation will pressure the Reserve Bank to cut rates. That will further boost demand in the economy.
5. The government's subsidy bill will come down as it will no longer have to reimburse oil companies for selling diesel at below-market price. Last year (2013-14), the government had to pay Rs 85,000 crore for selling diesel, LPG and kerosene at below-market prices. This year the subsidy burden was estimated much lower at around Rs 63,000 crore.
6. The freeing up of diesel prices and the sharp fall in global crude prices is expected to further save the government over Rs 10,000 crore in subsidy payment this year, analysts say. Lower subsidy means the government may be able to meet its fiscal deficit target of 4.1 per cent of GDP. This will be a big positive for the Indian economy.
7. Lower fiscal deficit will reduce government borrowing and increase spending on asset creation, which will add to economic productivity.
8. India imports over 75 per cent of its domestic oil requirements. Oil is the biggest component of the import bill. Falling crude prices will lead to a reduction in import bill and will have a positive impact on rupee.
9. Diesel sales account for about 55 per cent of overall sales of oil marketing companies. Till now, these companies had to sell diesel at below-market price and were later compensated by the government for the loss in revenue. Upstream oil companies such as ONGC, Oil India and GAIL also had to contribute to subsidies. With diesel under-recovery gone, their subsidy burden will come down and profitability will go up. Expect these shares to do well.
10. Deregulation is also expected to bring private firms such as Reliance Industries and Essar Oil into retail sale. Such companies do not receive government support for selling diesel at discounted rates and currently sell via state refiners, despite having their own sales infrastructure.
 

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How GST Amendment Bill could reinvigorate India

Indian truck drivers clock an average of 280 km per day, much below the world average of 400 km per day and far below the 700 km the average truck driver in the US does every day. The underperformance of Indian truckers has less to do with bad roads and less fancy trucks and more about prevailing archaic laws.
Truck drivers in India spend 60 per cent of their time off roads negotiating check posts and toll plazas, says UBS Securities, which has also found that there are 650-odd check posts in the country and 11 categories of taxes on the road transport sector.
Since road traffic accounts for 60 per cent of freight traffic in India, the slow movement of trucks across states leads to productivity loss. According to UBS, if the distance covered goes up by 20 per cent per day, Indian truck productivity would improve by 12 per cent.
Higher productivity would cut the need for buffer stocks; reduce the loss of perishable goods, cut down the need for many warehouses, etc.
Analysts say the implementation of the goods and services tax (GST) could provide the kind of productivity boost illustrated above. Gautam Chhaochharia, head of India Research of UBS Securities, explains the benefits of GST,
1) Unified market: The GST will cut down the large number of taxes imposed by the central government (eg. central VAT or excise duty, services tax, central sales tax on inter-state sales, etc.) and states (VAT on sales, entertainment tax, luxury tax and octroi and entry taxes levied by municipalities). This will lead to the creation of a unified market, which would facilitate seamless movement of goods across states and reduce the transaction cost of businesses.
2) Lower incentive to evade tax: Currently, companies have to pay taxes on entire underlying value of the product/service, but under GST, companies in a chain will have to pay tax only on the value-addition. So, the actual tax paid will likely be small and reduce the incentive for evasion.
3) Widen tax base: GST will give credits for all taxes paid earlier in the goods/services chain incentivising tax-paying firms to source inputs from other registered dealers. This will bring in additional revenues to the government as the unorganised sector, which is not part of the value chain, would be drawn into the tax net. Besides, states will be allowed to tax services (as opposed to only the central government) under the GST.
According to the National Council of Applied Economic Research, government's tax revenue will increase by about 0.2 per cent because of GST implementation, while GDP growth could go up by 0.9-1.7 per cent. Exports will also get a boost as they are zero-rated for taxes and also because the fall in cost of manufactured goods and services under GST will increase the competitiveness of Indian goods and services in the international market, UBS says.
Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Friday said that ensuring the passage of the constitutional amendment Bill in Parliamentary will be a priority for the government. The government will also need the consent of 50 per cent of states to implement GST by April 2016.
However, a consensus is still missing on the final GST tax rates and recommendations vary from 16 per cent to 27 per cent.

Finance ministry officials are now hopeful of introducing the bill in the current session of Parliament.


The change in stance came after Jaitley assured state finance ministers that the Centre would take care of any revenue loss due to the rollout of GST. However, he rejected their demand for excluding petroleum and tobacco from the ambit of the new tax regime. States were clearly told that the Constitution gave the right to tax tobacco to the Centre.
In case of petroleum, which accounts for as much as a quarter of the revenue for some states, the finance ministry is learnt to have dug out minutes of an empowered committee meeting that took place in February where states had agreed to keep oil products within GST.
On the second concern related to providing for compensation for five years after GST rollout, the Centre appeared to go along with the states. The Centre is also willing to address the concern related to including the compensation provision in the bill.

The finance ministry is also working out a solution to deal with the worries of revenue loss to "manufacturing" states such as Gujarat and Maharashtra.
It is not clear how the Centre plans to deal with the issue of entry tax, which the states want to be retained, citing revenue implications.
While Rather said that a solution will be found within a week, a finance ministry official said "a week is too long in politics" and the government would try to introduce the bill in the current session of Parliament.

States such as West Bengal are, however, still not on board. "GST cannot be introduced at the cost of loss of state revenue meant for development of people," said state finance minister Amit Mitra.
Although Gujarat is one of the major protestors, the Modi government is confident of getting the state on board. Its calculations to push the GST legislation hinge on control in several states where it is in power. In addition, it is banking on support from Punjab and Andhra Pradesh along with consuming states such as Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, which stand to gain from the introduction of GST. The government also believes that it has support from Kerala and Karnataka, two Congress-ruled states.

In an action packed evening, Jaitley proposed a formula to break the impasse and urged states to reconsider their stand, while staying firm on the states demands for exemptions.
In a bid to bridge the trust deficit between the states and the Centre, Jaitley had approved the release of Rs 11,000 crore as compensation for loss on account of central sales tax which had been pending since 2010. He had also vowed to pay the pending amount as he moved to ensure that the states come on board for rolling out the tax reform measure which has the potential to add significantly to government revenues and overall economic growth.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi (left) with finance minister Arun Jaitley. The Modi-led NDA government had been pushing for GST since it came to power in May year.
Implementing GST, the most ambitious indirect tax reform, is a centrepiece of the Narendra Modi government's reform agenda. The government is hopeful of introducing the constitutional amendment bill which will pave the way for rolling out GST in the current winter session of Parliament. The tax reform measure has missed several rollout dates in the past.

 

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What is SWF and why India needs Russia's coherance

DEFINITION of 'Sovereign Wealth Fund - SWF'

Pools of money derived from a country's reserves, which are set aside for investment purposes that will benefit the country's economy and citizens. The funding for a sovereign wealth fund (SWF) comes from central bank reserves that accumulate as a result of budget and trade surpluses, and even from revenue generated from the exports of natural resources. The types of acceptable investments included in each SWF vary from country to country; countries with liquidity concerns limit investments to only very liquid public debt instruments.
Some countries have created SWFs to diversify their revenue streams. For example, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) relies on oil exports for its wealth. Therefore, it devotes a portion of its reserves to an SWF that invests in other types of assets that can act as a shield against oil-related risk.
The amount of money in these SWF is substantial. As of May 2007, the UAE's fund was worth more than $875 billion. The estimated value of all SWFs is pegged at $2.5 trillion.

India needs SWF'S to boost investment-

Swiss brokerage Credit Suisse today said the robust foreign inflows into the country's debt and equities markets will halve to USD 18-20 billion next year on a slowdown in the sovereign wealth funds' (SWFs) play. "The FII (foreign institutional investors) inflows into the domestic markets will come down to USD 18-20 billion in the next 12 months, which is half of the current inflows," managing director for equity research Neelkanth Mishra told reporters here. He attributed this primarily to a possible slowdown in pumping in money by the SWFs. SWFs are short on allocatable resources due to the fall in the crude oil prices, Mishra said. FIIs hold as much as 27 percent in the over USD 1.6 trillion Sensex market capitalisation as of the September quarter, which is at a historic high. Currently, the inflows are almost evenly split between debt and equities, (as there is a USD 25 billion cap on FIIs' holdings in government bonds, though there is a huge demand for more) and Mishra pointed to his in-house research which said around 40-50 per cent of the inflows into domestic equities come from SWFs. It can be noted that oil prices have slid to a five-year low of USD 66-67 to a barrel. Since June, there has been a massive 35 percent fall in the Indian basket of Brent crude. Many of the countries in the Middle East like the UAE and Oman have very active SWFs. Even though the policy-makers sometimes blame such flows to be "fickle", the FII inflows are important for funding the current account gap and reducing the overall deficit, which surged up to 2.1 percent in the second quarter as against 1.2 percent a year-ago.

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