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A Bill to amend the Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988, to enhance the penalty for graft to a maximum of seven years, among other things, was moved for consideration in the Rajya Sabha on Tuesday. The bill was moved by Union minister Jitendra Singh. Business Standard, New Delhi, 2nd Dec. 2015

The Reserve Bank of India said on Tuesday it was not changing any of its key policy rates. That said, it believes banks have room to reduce their own lending rates, noting less than half of the cumulative policy rate reduction of 125 basis points ( bps) since January has been transmitted by the latter —the median base lending rate has come down only by 60- odd bps. “I think if you look at onethree years’ deposits, banks have already cut significantly more than they have transmitted via the base rate. So, in that case, there is room building up for the banks to transmit more,” said Raghuram Rajan, the RBI Governor. A cut in lending rates is preceded by one in the deposit rates, to ensure the margins are protected. Rajan added: “ We are working with banks on a new methodology to determine the base rate, which will be on marginal cost, and it should be put out sometime this week. What the marginal cost of pricing does is make the costs flow through into lending rates faster. So, t

The Securities and Exchange Board of India ( Sebi) on Monday warned of specific consequences if entities are found to be breaching the listing regulations on an exchange. One of these is the freezing of promoter and promoter group holding in such an entity. Starting Tuesday, as a result of Mondays instructions, listing agreements between entities and exchanges become redundant. All such contractual agreements will be replaced by the new Sebi regulations. As a first call of action, exchanges would impose penalties on companies not complying with Sebi regulations. “Recognised stock exchanges shall use imposition of fines as action of first resort in case of such noncompliance and invoke suspension of trading in case of structure on fines and scrip in a separate, ‘ Z’, category. Here, trades shall be on a trade for trade basis only. To ensure a smooth transition, Sebi has issued a set of circulars on reporting of different aspects under the present listing regulations, such as m

The Securities and Exchange Board of India ( Sebi) on Monday cleared the decks for initial public offerings ( IPOs) by stock exchanges and depository firms by providing clarity on the listing framework. It said the combined shareholding of trading members, associates and brokers in a listed exchange cannot exceed 49 per cent. Every shareholder will have to declare their “ fit & proper” status at the time of the IPO. The depositories will monitor the investment caps for single entities. The industry players, however, said they would wait for more clarity. “We welcome the Sebi move. We will be able to comment once the detailed regulations are published. BSE will try to expedite the listing process, based on the regulations. Listing of exchanges is expected to bring additional transparency to their working,” said a BSE spokesperson. BSE had proposed to list in 2012 but could not because of the lack of enabling provisions. The NSE, which recently told its shareholders a

RBI gives a leg-up to rupee bonds The Reserve Bank of India ( RBI) on Monday approved a set of more liberal external commercial borrowing norms ( ECB), allowing Indian companies to raise rupee resources from overseas lenders, without incurring currency risks. The new norms will be effective April 1 next year. Such rupee- denominated bonds are being issued in large numbers. They are a hit with Japanese retail investors. Once Indian companies start raising rupee resources from abroad, more such bonds will be issued and would help make the domestic currency more international. For ECB in foreign currency, the central bank raised the limit for small- value bonds, with a minimum average maturity of three years, to $50 million from the existing $ 20 million. For ECB of more than $ 50 million, the minimum maturity period should be five years, it said. The allin cost for such ECB has been reduced 50 basis points from what was allowed earlier. For long- term ECB though, the all-

Govt capital expenditure pushes investments, domestic demand a concern India’s gross domestic product ( GDP) for the three- month period ended September 30 grew 7.4 per cent— a tad higher than the seven per cent in the previous quarter — with a boost from manufacturing and financial services. The growth of the manufacturing sector —more than nine per cent — pleased the finance minister, Arun Jaitley. He said despite adverse global conditions, factory production had increased. The statistics and programme implementationministryreleasedthefiguresonMonday. There was a slight increase in investments because of the government’s capital expenditure, butthedomesticdemandcontinuedtobe aconcern. The growth was, however, much slower than the 8.4 per cent in the corresponding quarter of the previous financial year. Economists had projected that GDP would growby7.3- 7.6percentthisquarter( seechart). The gross value added ( GVA), comprising agriculture, industry and services, increase

Updates Of the Day 1.Particulars of candidates for election of ICAI is availabe at http://icai.org/post.html?post_id=12122 and the details of your polling booth are also available on – www.icai.org and the link being 'Election-2015'. 2.SEBI has prescribed format for financial results and limited review report for listed entities which have listed their debt securities and/or non-cumulative redeemable preference shares wef 1st December 2015. 3.DVAT issued Circular No. 31 of 2015-2016 directing zonal authorities to restore registration within 3 days after the proposal is approved by Competent Authority. 4.DVAT notified extending time for submissions of Form DP-1 latest by 31.12.2015. 5.Transfer pricing provisions requires comparison of a controlled transaction with uncontrolled transaction, comparison within two controlled transaction is immaterial. [ITAT Mumbai: Greaves Cotton Ltd. vs. ITO] 6.Reassessment proceeding based on ED information without correlating with returns