Indian Current Affairs: 13.03.2007

As reported earlier in our blog, the government is preparing ground for coming out with a new PSU for hunting coal reserves all across the globe.
It is stated to be having equity participation of Rs. 1000 crores each from SAIL, NTPC, CIL and Rs. 500 crores each from RINL and NMDC.
It is expected to be kept outside the purview of the CVC guidelines for facilitating quick clearances for large acquisition. It would be placed directly under the control of an empowered committee of secretaries with full powers on the lines similar to empowerment for oil block acquisition.

The Congress MP from Tezpur MK Subba is a controversial figure.
In the 12^th Lok Sabha, his place of birth is mentioned as Tezpur and his date of birth is shown as March 16, 1951. In the present Lok Sabha, his records say that he war born in Debagram village in Darjeeling and that his date of birth is March 16, 1958.

Three Indians – Jaishankar Marimuthu, Chokalingam Ramanathan (both from Chennai) and Thirugnanam Ramanathan, residing in Malaysia are charged with hacking into online brokerage accounts in the US to pump up value of their shares.
They perpetrated a scheme and used their personal online brokerage accounts to purchase shares of several thinly-traded shares. They then hacked into online brokerage accounts of others using stolen usernames and passwords and made scores of unauthorized purchases of the same stocks to drive up the market price. And when once the prices were inflated artificially they sold their own shares for a substantial profit.
The above is the account of an indictment they received from a federal court in Omaha, Nebraska, USA.

The Prevention of Money Laundering Act came into effect in India in 2002.
FATF (Financial Action Task Force) is a global inter-governmental body developing and promoting policies to combat money laundering and terrorist financing.
PMLA was passed by India to be in conformity with the FATF guidelines. The KYC (Know Your Customer) guidelines were put in place for opening bank accounts to meet the obligations under the PMLA.
Banks have to report all cash withdrawals above Rs .10 lakh to the financial intelligence unit (FIU) which manages the data and deciphers into intelligence to be used by various agencies.
At present, the PMLA rules apply to banks. The rules did not cover offshore banks. Offshore banks are deemed foreign branches of Indian banks on which domestic regulations do not apply. These banks can mop up deposits of people outside India as well as lend to people outside India.
Government is about to bring an amendment to the PMLA to rope in casinos and offshore banks into the PMLA net.

It was Rs. 1,76,000 crores in 2006-07.
The FM is expecting it to touch Rs. 2,25,000 crores in 2007-08.
The NPA levels of banks were 1.3% in the previous year. He is expecting it to be about 1% next year.

As they are politically determined, when market interest rates were falling, the Trust continued to pay a higher-than-market rate of interest by dipping into reserves.
When market rates were rising, it has to pay lower-than-market rate of interest, because its reserves were wiped out. But subscribers don’t like it that way and it would also be a distortionary practice.
This could leave a possibility of the government stepping in and saying that it would make good the shortfall.
It would be unfair to the retiring members during the period when EPF rates were lower than market since they will be denied the upside of the Trust paying more than the market when rates fall.
Hence, it is better to leave the EPF rates related to market rates. The funniest part is EPF covers only the organized workforce that constitutes less than 10% of the workers in the country.

Indian Current Affairs