1. Govt Initiates Work On Shifting Financial Year To January-December
The government has initiated the spadework for shifting the financial year to January, from April, to align it with the agriculture production cycle.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi had backed the idea of January-December financial year last month while addressing chief ministers at the Governing Council of NITI Aayog.
Preliminary work has started and it will gather momentum as year progresses, sources said.
The GST implementation from 1 July is also an indication in that direction, sources said, adding that it is being implemented beginning second half of the calendar year.
The government had last year set-up a high-level committee to study the feasibility of shifting financial year to January 1 from the current practice of starting it from April 1.
(Source: BloombergQuint)
2. Sacked IT Employees Approaching Unions for Support
Information technology professionals, who claim they were coerced into resigning by employers looking to trim headcount in the midst of an industry slowdown, are flocking to unions in search of support for their demand for compensation.
Last week, a Bengaluru-based technology professional employed by a multinational IT services company received a phone call from the human resource executive asking her to quit voluntarily.
These retrenched employees – of both local and multinational IT companies – claim their former employers pressured them to hand in resignations instead of firing them, thereby saving on the expense of severance pay.
(Source: The Economic Times)
3. Earnings, Global Cues to Set Trend; Stocks May See Volatility
Stock markets may see volatility this week amid derivatives expiry, and indices taking cues from quarterly earnings of blue-chips such as Tata Motors, ITC, and Sun Pharma as also global trends, say experts.
"Going ahead, F&O expiry is due on Thursday so the week is likely to remain volatile. Rising political uncertainty in the US market could impact global markets badly," Abnish Kumar Sudhanshu, Director and Research Head, Amrapali Aadya Trading and Investments said.
The result season is going on and all eyes will be on the numbers, he added.
(Source: PTI)
4. Jayant Sinha Has a New Security Plan for Your Flights, and It Includes Aadhaar
The government plans to use Aaadhar to “completely digitise” air travel amid a raging debate on privacy concerns regarding the world’s largest biometric ID database.
Through verification by Aadhaar, travellers will be able to get a digital boarding pass much before their flight, Minister of State for Civil Aviation Jayant Sinha said in an interview with BloombergQuint’s Sanjay Pugalia. On reaching the airport, Aadhaar biometrics would allow seamless entry though the security and check-in points, avoiding the need for a hard copy of the boarding pass, Sinha said.
The government is also looking to launch 'Travel Stack', an interface which will hold the Aadhaar data to allow fluid and paperless travel. The application programming interface will be similar to India Stack, which is part of the government’s ‘Digital India’ efforts.
(Source: BloombergQuint)
5. New Policy to Help Indian Defence Manufacturing Firms Gain Cutting-Edge Capabilities
The Defence Ministry’s decision to allow companies outside state control to build fighter jets, submarines and armoured vehicles is likely to help Indian defence manufacturing firms.
Larsen and Toubro Ltd, Ashok Leyland Ltd, Mahindra and Mahindra Ltd, Reliance Infrastructure Ltd, Tata Group, Punj Lloyd, Adani Group and Bharat Forge Ltd, which have existing defence businesses, are likely to benefit the most from the decision, analysts say.
While Tata and Reliance Infra have taken steps to build aircraft, Larsen and Toubro could enter the submarine space, while armoured vehicles could be an area of interest for Bharat Forge, Mahindra and Tata, said Laxman Kumar Behera, senior research fellow, Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (IDSA).
(Source: Live Mint)
6. PM Modi to Highlight GST Reform Achievement on Foreign Tours
Prime Minister Narendra Modi will showcase the new Goods and Services Tax (GST) during his summer tour of high-power diplomacy that will take him across Germany, Russia and the US over the next two months, leading up to the G-20 high table in July.
South Block officials told ET that GST will be at the core of the Prime Minister's big pitch underlining India's commitment to long-term structural reforms for making it easier to do business in India.
"It does show that we have a strong government in Delhi, which can take bold decisions to create a predictable environment for foreign investors," said a senior official.
(Source: The Economic Times)
7. Maharashtra: Plan to Revive Ailing Cooperative Banks in State Hits Hurdle
The Maharashtra State Co-operative (MSC) Bank Ltd has rejected a state government proposal to take over loss-making Wardha District Central Co-operative Bank (DCCB) in Vidarbha, pouring cold water over the government’s larger attempt to revive 11 loss-making DCCBs in the state.
Acquiring Wardha DCCB, which has a “staggering 98% NPAs”, or non performing assets, would affect profitability, said Pramod Karnad, managing director of MSC Bank, India’s biggest bank in the co-operative sector and the apex bank for Maharashtra’s 31 DCCBs.
Maharashtra is India’s leading state in terms of the network of the co-operatives and the penetration of co-operative banks. MSC Bank is an apex body for 31 DCCBs which have 3,746 branches, with a third tier of 21,085 Primary Agriculture Credit Societies (PACS) which directly lend to farmers and the rural population.
(Source: Live Mint)
8. Early Budget Lifts April Spend by 50%
Advancing the Union Budget and passing the Finance Bill before the start of the financial year are already showing results in central government expenditure. For April, total spending is pegged at Rs 2.43 lakh crore, Business Standard has learnt.
That is a near 50 per cent jump over Rs 1.62 lakh crore spent in April 2016. The April 2017 figure of Rs 2.43 lakh crore works out to 11.3 per cent of the total budgeted spending estimates for 2017-18 at Rs 21.46 lakh crore. Last April, the expenditure was 8.2 per cent of the annual spending estimates for 2016-17.
(Source: Business Standard)
9. India to Have Science Infrastructure Sharing Policy Soon
India is formulating a policy on maintaining and sharing science infrastructure so that R&D facilities do not remain limited to academia but are also accessed by industry, according to a senior bureaucrat of the Union Ministry of Science and Technology.
“The idea is to create infrastructure which becomes shareable, which becomes sustainable and is also accessible to our industry. A whole lot of scientific infrastructure is not available to our industry. We are going to come up with a policy this year, about maintaining, sustaining and effectively using scientific infrastructure in a shared way,” Ashutosh Sharma, Secretary, Department of Science and Technology, told IANS in an interview on the sidelines of a DST Conclave.
A web portal is being envisaged to implement the policy, Sharma said. “Indian institutes have R&D labs. We will tell people about the models by which they can share the infrastructure in a transparent way. So in a website, anybody can book a slot and put in a request to access instruments in different labs,” he explained.
(Source: IANS)
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