1. Jaitley Paints Rosy Picture of Tax Mop-Up, Sees No Note Ban Effect
Refuting claims that economic activity has been hit by the withdrawal of high-denomination currency notes, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Monday said tax collections between April and December 2016 have shown a positive trend and risen significantly.
Giving a break-up of the figures, Jaitley told reporters that direct tax mop-up increased 12.01 percent to ₹5.53 lakh crore while indirect tax revenue grew 25 percent to ₹6.30 lakh crore in the first eight months of the fiscal.
Cumulatively, the tax revenue in this period amounted to ₹11.83 lakh crore, against the target of ₹16.3 lakh crore for 2016-17.
“This data is real and not an estimate,” the Minister stressed, adding that value-added tax collection has also risen for most states.
(Source: The Hindu BusinessLine)
2. Flipkart Names Kalyan Krishnamurthy Its CEO, Binny Bansal To Head Group
Flipkart has named former Tiger Global executive Kalyan Krishnamurthy as the chief executive of India’s largest online retailer in a new organisation structure announced on Monday.
Binny, will head the newly formed Flipkart Group organisation while co-founder Sachin Bansal will continue as executive chairman, the e-commerce major said in a media statement. Binny replaced Sachin as the CEO in January 2016.
Nitin Seth, currently the chief administrative officer, has been named the COO and will report to Kalyan.
Ananth Narayanan will continue to be the CEO of Myntra-Jabong and Sameer Nigam will continue to lead PhonePe. Kalyan, Ananth and Sameer will report to Binny.
Flipkart Group is looking for a group CFO and general counsel, who will also report to Binny.
(Source: Bloomberg Quint)
3. Govt Will Benefit the Most from Card Payments at Petrol Pumps, It Must Pay the Commission
Oil minister Dharmendra Pradhan has done well to, for now, defuse the immediate tension over petrol pumps refusing to accept debit/credit card payments after some banks said they would charge a one percent commission on the transactions.
While a decision will be taken on who will bear the burden, the confusion shows the government still doesn’t have a cohesive plan for digital payments – else, why would it announce a slew of incentives for this a few weeks ago and, by not now stepping up to make the payments, risk losing the momentum of the past few weeks?
A 50 percent jump in debit/credit card payments, and not just at petrol pumps, means (based on data for four banks only) Indians are spending upwards of Rs 50,000 crore a month through debit/credit cards – data for the first few days of the new year, confirms the December trend.
(Source: The Financial Express)
4. Growth to Be Below 7.1% Estimate, Say Economists
Economists’ are sceptical about the Central Statistics Office’s 2016-17 advance estimate of 7.1 percent GDP growth, with some contending that the deceleration forecast in economic activity is possibly understated even without accounting for effects of demonetisation.
They see downside risk of at least 20-30 basis points to the CSO’s annual GDP estimate for 2016-17, with the second reading out on 28 February and final on 30 May.
The CSO had on Friday pegged the 2016-17 real GDP growth at 7.1 percent, much lower than the 7.6 percent GDP growth recorded in 2015-16.
Anis Chakravarty, Lead Economist, Deloitte India, said that the decline in economic activity itself is possibly underestimated on account of timing and methodology issues.
(Source: The Hindu BusinessLine)
5. Indian International Exchange To Go Live On 16 January With New ‘Sensex 50’ Index
The country's oldest stock exchange, the Bombay Stock Exchange, will start trading single-stock and equity-index futures at the India International Exchange or INDIAINX on 16 January 2017, an official at the exchange told BloombergQuint. It will add gold, silver, copper, oil and the rupee “soon”, he added.
The BSE has set up the this international exchange at Gujarat International Finance-Tec City based in Gandhinagar, Gujarat. The exchange was inaugurated by the Prime Minister, Narendra Modi on the eve of the 8th Vibrant Gujarat Summit.
“The exchange will reclaim some lost market share to equity-futures in Singapore, currency derivatives in Dubai and structured products in Hong Kong,” Bombay Stock Exchange Chief Executive Officer Ashishkumar Chauhan said in an interview to Bloomberg. “It is a dream of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. It is his baby as he has visualised various aspect of the project.”
(Source: Bloomberg Quint)
6. Implementation of Indo-Japan Free Trade Agreement Needs to Be Expedited: Nirmala Sitharaman
The pace of implementation of the Indo-Japan free trade agreement needs to be further enhanced in order to exploit the huge potential of the pact, Commerce and Industry Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said.
The issue among others was discussed during the meeting between Sitharaman and her Japanse counterpart Hiroshige Seko.
She stated that the pace of implementation of India-Japan Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA) has been rather steady and needed to be enhanced with faster pace to tap the huge potential of India- Japan bilateral trade, an official statement said.
(Source: The Financial Express)
7. Tata Sons Wants NCLT to Cancel Case Filed by Cyrus Mistry's Family Firms
Tata Sons has asked the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) to dismiss the case filed against it by Cyrus Mistry’s family investment firms, claiming the petitioners don’t have the necessary qualification to file such a suit.
Tata Sons said that the petition, filed by Cyrus Investments Pvt Ltd and Sterling Investment Corporation Pvt Ltd alleging mismanagement of Tata Sons and oppression of minority shareholders, should be dismissed under the Companies Act.
According to this Act, the petitioners should be holding at least one-tenth of the “issued share capital” of Tata Sons or representing at least one-tenth of the total number of members.
“It is well settled that the term ‘issued share capital’ of a company comprises not only the issued equity capital of such company but also the issued preference capital,” Tata Sons said in its response.
(Source: Livemint)
8. Muted Q3 Growth Seen for IT Exporters
As TCS kicks off the results season on 12 January, the market and the industry will be keenly watching whether the underlying trends panning out in the seasonally weak third quarter (as a result of furloughs and holidays) continues to hang like Damocles’ sword over IT companies, especially in the backdrop of changes — both political and in the outsourcing business.
Analysts that BusinessLine spoke to pointed out that TCS is expected to post 0.1 percent QoQ revenue growth (in USD terms) and 1.3 percent in constant currency terms.
“TCS may face headwinds in the form of a significant cross currency impact, a seasonally weak quarter and we don’t see immediate relief in its insurance/Japan businesses,” said Sandeep Agarwal, analyst at Edelweiss Securities.
A day after TCS reports its quarterly numbers, Infosys will come out with its performance and its management commentary on H-1B visas.
(Source: The Hindi BusinessLine)
9. Reliance Jio Now Plans to Reward Its Employees with Stock Options
Mukesh Ambani-owned Reliance Jio Infocomm is planning to roll out stock options for its employees, which could be a reward for the pace at which subscribers are being added as well as a talent retention and attraction strategy of the company, a source said.
The stock options programme is currently in the planning stage and could be rolled out later this year, the source added. The company, which launched 4G services last September, did not respond to emailed queries on the subject.
Reliance Jio, with its 30,000-plus permanent employees, will possibly introduce stock options initially for senior executives, another person said. All leading telcos such as Bharti AirtelBSE -0.28 %, Idea CellularBSE 1.51 % and Vodafone India have employee stock option (Esops) plans.
(Source: The Economic Times)
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