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The finance ministry has clarified that the Jan Dhan accounts can be opened with zero balance and there is no requirement of maintaining a minimum balance. The government would, however, look into a media report that said Rs.1 was deposited in many accounts to reduce the number of zero balance accounts. The Economic Times New Delhi,15th September 2016

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) on Wednesday set up a working group committee to review the guidelines on hedging of commodity price risk by residents in the overseas markets, drawing members from the central bank, the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi), commercial banks and corporates. The working group will be headed by Chandan Sinha, RBI's executive director, and will assess the risks faced by resident entities and their hedging requirements, identify gaps in the existing regulatory framework in relation to the hedging requirements, suggest the broad principles for guiding the regulatory regime for overseas hedging of commodity risks and recommend a modified framework for residents hedging commodity risk overseas, RBI said in a statement on its website. The central bank also invited for suggestions over email from anyone exposed to commodity price risks. The group will submit its report by February 28, 2017. Business Standard New Delhi,15th September 2016

Neutality and juridiction in international trade need to be discussed threadbare before GST is implemented in India This is a question too difficult for a mathematician. It should be asked of a philosopher.” Albert Einstein famously responded thus, to his tax returns. I am afraid his response would have been the same today. It has been a long and slow walk for the renewed integrated taxation system in the country. In a sphere that has faced obstacles of multiple hues in the past — exports — it becomes all the more important. Let us keep in mind that the export share of India has fallen to $ 262 million in 2016 from $ 302 million in 2012. With that bit of mathematics alone, let us meander into the realm of philosophy of the goods and services tax ( GST). GST aka value- added tax in some regions has already been implemented in more than 130 countries. The Mirrlees Review of the UK tax system, touted to be the best- researched document on modern tax systems, lays down a road map for

The labour ministry will seek Cabinet approval for the Wage Code Bill, which seeks to empower the Centre to set a minimum wage across all sectors in the country, in the next few weeks and will try to have it passed in Parliament’s coming winter session. Union Labour Minister Bandaru Dattatreya on Wednesday said discussions over the Bill between the government, trade unions and industry bodies had concluded. A group of ministers will meet on Thursday to decide the final shape of the Bill. Apart from Dattatreya, the group consists of Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, Power Minister Piyush Goyal and Petroleum Minister Dharmendra Pradhan. The Bill provides for a floor rate of national wage that will be mandatory for all states. This will provide a boost to the Centre’s recent initiative of increasing the minimum wage of central government employees by 42 per cent. “We are trying to create a mechanism for a minimum wage for all sectors,” Dattatreya said. The Centre and states now s

After initial confidence among government officials that India would swiftly sign bilateral investment treaties (BITs) with partner nations, it has now emerged that a number of countries, including the US, Canada and the European Union (EU) nations, have expressed reservations on some issues, including international arbitration. This has led to negotiations slowing down and signing of BITs, with India’s major global partners taking more time thanpreviously anticipated, BusinessStandard has learnt. Senior government sources say most countries, with whom India is negotiating the signing of BITs, have reservations about the fact that India’s BIT allows foreign companies and related aggrieved parties to seek international arbitration, only if they have exhausted all domestic dispute redressal mechanism or legal options. This provision does not sit well with partner nations, who want unconditional access to international arbitration. As a result, negotiations are delayed. BusinessSt

Having zeroed in on fund manager, the finance ministry is considering to launch second tranche of exchange traded fund ( ETF) comprising stocks of 10 public sector units (PSU) by the end of December. The second tranche of the ETF may hit the market by the end of the next quarter, sources said. Besides, anew ETF will be launched after the second tranche of the current ETF is issued, sources said, adding the new ETF will be different in  composition from the previous one. Business Standard New Delhi,14th September 2016

In a race against time to roll- out the goods and services tax ( GST) from April 1, 2017, the GST Network ( GSTN) —developing the information technology backbone for the new tax regime — is working closely with business process management ( BPM) software firms like SAP, Tally and Oracle, among others, to facilitate timely preparedness of the corporate sector for the transition. This comes amid the industry requesting six months time for the roll- out — from the time laws and rules are finalised in order to align their systems with the new law. The GST laws are expected to be finalised by November- December this year. However, the GSTN is planning to meet about 100- 150 BPM software firms by September- end and hand over the application programming interface ( API) to develop the enterprise resource planning ( ERP) software, which will act as an interface between their clients and GSTN. “We don’t need to assist all companies, but just 100- 150, which will, in turn, help the corpo