Politics & the Nation
Finance & Economics
- Budget
- Today the budget is being presented. It is well worth the effort to take a look at the budget making process and some conventions that go with it. Look at it here.
- How are pharma companies misuing the Prevention of Food Adulteration Act (PFA)?
- The prices of 74 bulk drugs — raw materials or intermediaries — that the government considers essential are controlled.
- The extant regulatory system allows companies to raise medicine prices by adding ingredients not listed under the law relating to drugs and cosmetics. Companies often add a new ingredient that does not come under the Drugs and Cosmetics Act to a price-controlled drug and get a licence from the health ministry under PFA. This enables them to increase prices of their popular brands, jacking up consumers’ medical bills. PFA is generally reserved for food products such as jams, pickles and cheese.
- For instance take the case of Merck’s popular Vitamin E Evion 400 and Ranbaxy’s Revital. The companies changed the ingredients and reintroduced them as dietary supplements or over-thecounter (OTC) products manufactured with a licence issued under the PFA.
- Advance pricing to boost offshoring
- So reads a news report in today's ET. What is advance pricing?
- APA (Advance Pricing Arrangement) is an agreement between a taxpayer and tax authorities that allows both to set out in advance the method of determining the transfer pricing for inter-company transactions. Most countries allow for APAs under their transfer pricing regulations as they help prevent actual or potential pricing disputes in a co-operative manner. They also provide an alternative to traditional dispute resolution. Industry and tax experts in India have demanded APAs be put in place ever since transfer pricing laws were introduced in the country in 2001.
- Transfer pricing provisions in general require income arising from an international transaction between two or more related organisations to be calculated at an arm’s length price. The basic test of this is that they should be comparable to similar transactions between unrelated parties.
- APAs provide muchneeded certainty that foreign companies look for while making an investment decision. Also, APAs prevent unnecessary and protracted litigation that are going on over transfer pricing in India.
- The Rail budget (A belated recap)
- While it has announced a plethora of new passenger amenities, new trains, Rs 25 passes for the poor, new welfare measures for railway employees and special gifts for West Bengal, including a new coach factory, nonstop trains and concessions for students on the Kolkata Metro, concerns about dismal investment in infrastructure appear well placed. It would be spending just about Rs. 472 crore on new wagon orders in 2009-10 and a measly Rs. 2,484 crore on totally new works.
- Declining operating ratio
- A key indicator of Railway financial health is the operating ratio, or the ratio of operating expenses to gross traffic receipts. This had reached nearly 98% in the early part of the decade, when Ms Banerjee was railway minister in the Vajpayee government. The turnaround in the Railways’ fortunes, brought about under Mr Lalu Prasad’s leadership, had seen the operating ratio come down to 76% in 2007-08 — that is, for every one rupee earned from carrying passengers and freight, the Railways had an operating surplus of 24 paise. This comes down to 7.5 paise in Ms Banerjee’s Budget for 2009-10.
- Some highlights
- 57 new trains, 12 non-stop duronto ones, 50 stations to be made world class, 375 into Adarsh stations Rs 25 monthly season pass for travel up to 100 km for those with monthly income of Rs 1,500 Tatkal charges reduced to a minimum of Rs 100, time cut from 5 days to 2
- Premium container service in assured time Pvt ownership of special rolling stock, construction & operation of pvt freight terminals 882 mt freight target; to get into fly ash, cement
- Pay commission award and jump in pension payments cause expenses to shoot up 12.8%, total receipts up only 7.6% Surplus falls to Rs 2,642 crore, leaving investible funds of only Rs 8,631 crore The railways has to rely on increased budget support and higher borrowings to fund its plan; dividend and interest burden will go up
- White paper to lay out Vision 2020 Perceptibly improved passenger amenities Monitoring mechanism to prevent project delays, innovative ideas for land utilisation Look into economically-unviable social projects
- Know what is a 'duronto' train service?
- Yeah alright, we know that the budget announced 12 such new trains that run non-stop between metros and major state capitals. But how or why the name 'duronto'? It is a Bangla word meaning 'quick'.
- Coal linkages to be cancelled for captive power plants
- The captive plants, which produce 1,292 mw, require 5.8 million tonnes of coal per annum. As part of the coal distribution policy, the government has allotted them coal blocks for capitve mining. Because many of them are not utilizing the allocations and are seen as preventing optimum extraction of coal which could otherwise help alleviate the coal shortages, the government is reportedly considering this move.
- The country produces over 450 million tonnes of coal per annum. This is 15 million tonnes short of the quantity needed to meet the requirements of the power sector.
International
- Pledge your soul for a loan
- A Latvian company called Kontora just takes your soul as collateral and advances you money.
- Looks surprising; know? Read this report. Interesting.
Language lessons
- pithiness: Noun
- Terseness and economy in writing and speaking achieved by expressing a great deal in just a few words
- eg: Though Hugo’s actual quote did not have Singh’s 20th century pithiness, the idea was well taken.
- prosaic: Adjective
- Not fanciful or imaginative; Lacking wit or imagination; Not challenging; dull and lacking excitement
- eg: Dream budgets can sour and prosaic budgets may seemingly deliver!
Loading...
0 comments:
Post a Comment