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The International Monetary Fund (IMF) on Tuesday marginally lowered its 2015-16 growth forecast for India, which will still remain the world’s fastest growing major economy, and expressed optimism about its future prospects. IMF now expects the Indian economy to grow 7.3% this year, lower than the 7.5% it projected in July. It expects growth to accelerate to 7.5% the following year. That will cement India’s position as the fastest growing major economy, ahead of China, which the IMF expects will grow 6.8% this year, followed by 6.3% in the next. IMF also lowered its global growth forecast by 0.2 percentage points to 3.1%, citing an uneven recovery as well as increasing downside risks to the growth outlook for emerging market economies that are grappling with declining commodity prices, depreciating currencies and growing volatility in financial markets. The Washington-based multilateral institution attributed the lowering of India’s growth forecast to the weakening of global

For foreign portfolio investors (FPIs), the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) will be increasing the investment limit in governmnet securities to Rs. 1,79,500 crore by January 1,from the existing Rs. 1,53,500 crore. For state development loans(SDLs), the limit will be enhanced to Rs.7,000 crore by January 1; currently it is nill. Easing norms for foreign ownership of government of government debt, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) on Tuesday announced higher investment limits in rupee terms in government securities by FPIs with a view to bringing in an additional Rs.1.2 ;akh crore by March 2018. Business Standard, New Delhi, 7th Oct. 2015

A government- appointed high level panel has recommended uniform tax treatment for all corporate social responsibility activities carried out under the new Companies Act and also suggested leniency towards non- compliant firms in the first two- three years of this law. Business Standard, New Delhi, 7th Oct. 2015

Ahead of the winter session of Parliament, the government appears to be hopeful of introducing the goods and services tax ( GST) from the next financial year. This is despite the fact that the Congress is yet to express support for the Constitution amendment Bill for the new indirect tax regime in its present form. “We have introduced the GST Bill in Parliament and hope to roll it out in 2016,” Prime Minister Narendra Modi said at an event organised by Nasscom in Bengaluru on Tuesday. The event was attended by industry captains such as Kumar Mangalam Birla, A M Naik, Azim Premji, G M Rao, Chanda Kochhar and Shikha Sharma. The PM was sharing the stage with visiting German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Meanwhile, addressing students and faculty at Columbia University in the US, Finance Minister Jaitley said GST would be the government’s priority. From the US, the Finance Minister will travel to Lima, Peru, to attend the World Bank- International Monetary Fund meeting. The GST Bill is

The Centre is in talks with Mauritius with regard to the long- pending revision of the bilateral tax treaty, Revenue Secretary Hasmukh Adhia said on Monday. The changes to the three- decade old treaty have been hanging fire amid apprehensions that Mauritius is being used to route unaccounted money. Business Standard, New Delhi, 6th Oct. 2015

Leading bourse BSE on Monday said it implemented Precision Time Protocol ( PTP) at its platform and also started extending it to all the members trading from its colocation facility. BSE becomes the first stock exchange in the country to implement the technology that offers time synchronisations in the range of nano seconds, helping the exchange to leverage the accuracy in all its time stamps. The bourse has extended the PTP services to members trading from its co- location facility, a data centre with racks for computer servers, without levying any additional cost, it said in a statement. Co- location facility allows brokers to host servers near the exchange’s trading platform, facilitating faster execution of trades due to low latency in data transmission. Exchanges across the globe are slowly migrating to Precision Time Protocol because Network Time Protocol is not a suitable framework in todays ultra low latency trading platforms. Earlier in 2014, BSE had launched its equit

Leading bourse BSE on Monday said it implemented Precision Time Protocol ( PTP) at its platform and also started extending it to all the members trading from its colocation facility. BSE becomes the first stock exchange in the country to implement the technology that offers time synchronisations in the range of nano seconds, helping the exchange to leverage the accuracy in all its time stamps. The bourse has extended the PTP services to members trading from its co- location facility, a data centre with racks for computer servers, without levying any additional cost, it said in a statement. Co- location facility allows brokers to host servers near the exchange’s trading platform, facilitating faster execution of trades due to low latency in data transmission. Exchanges across the globe are slowly migrating to Precision Time Protocol because Network Time Protocol is not a suitable framework in todays ultra low latency trading platforms. Earlier in 2014, BSE had launched its equit