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Retailers go to small towns for big growth In the September quarter, Kishore Biyaniled Future Retail opened its hypermarket Big Bazaar at Hajipur in Bihar, Puri in Odisha, and Raigarh in Chhattisgarh, taking the presence of its flagship stores to 130 cities across 26 states.Big Bazaar has also signed up properties for new stores in the remaining three states —Meghalaya, Mizoram and Nagaland. A clear sign organised retailers are not only reaching tierII and tierIII towns but beyond is that Biyani has announced plans to have 10,000 smallformat neighbourhood stores across the nation in the next five years, up from 700 now. In FY18 itself, he plans to take the number of small format Easyday stores to 1,100. “We will open stores within 2 km of every consuming Indian,” Biyani said, unleashing his Retail 3.0 plans that aims to make the Future Group Asia´s largest integrated consumer business, with Rs 1 trillion in revenues, by 2047.The retail giant also has a consumer and logistics bu

Bombay HC liquidator starts auction process The process to sell the Sahara group´s Aamby Valley began on Friday with the official liquidator of the Bombay High Court (HC) inviting bids for the property.Last week, the Supreme Court (SC) asked the official liquidator of the Bombay HC to take over and manage Aamby Valley. It said the auction must begin on December 1 (Friday) and has to be completed within eight weeks.The HC liquidator came out with newspaper advertisements on the sale on Friday.An earlier attempt to auction the property had failed, as no bidder had come forward to bid for it In fact, the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) told the Supreme Court that Sahara chief Subrata Roy and other directors of the company tried to obstruct the sale.The properties for sale comprise the 6,761.64acre township named ´Aamby Valley City Development´ in Lonavala in Pune district of Maharashtra and includes 1,409 acres surrounding the township and 321 acres in neighbouring S

Govt eases rules for auction of mineral blocks New mining rules to allow wider participation, ensure auctions are not called off for want of biddersIn an attempt to generate fresh interest from miners for auctions of mineral blocks, the government has amended the rules to allow wider participation and reduce the chances of auctions getting called off for want of bidders. A statement from the ministry of mines said on Friday that the Mineral Auction Rules were amended on Thursday, a move expected to enhance investor participation in future auctions.About 34 mineral blocks across six states have been chosen for auction by the end of the current fiscal year, the statement said. Poor investor interest due to subdued commodity prices and tighter rules led to the cancellation of about 60 auctions since 2015, when auctions replaced administrative allocation of mineral blocks.The National Democratic Alliance government had introduced auctions to remove the element of discretion in the

Working on linking e-wallets UPI National Payments Corp. of India (NPCI) is working to set up a framework for integrating non-bank mobile wallets with the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) platform. The process of integration will be completed in the next 2-3 months, said Dilip Asbe, the chief operating officer of NPCI, the umbrella organization for all retail payments in the country. As of now, non-bank mobile wallet users cannot make payments through UPI; they can only load their wallets through it. The Mint, New Delhi, 2nd December 2017

GST maze leaves exporters sulking for refunds In its 22nd meeting on October 6, the Goods and Services Tax (GST) Council had asked the government to quickly refund to exporters the Integrated GST (IGST) paid on goods exported.Finance Minister Arun Jaitley announced that refunds will start from October 10, for exports made in July, and from October 18, for exports made in August. However, most exporters have so far not received refund of the IGST paid in July or subsequent months.The Central Board of Excise and Customs (CBEC) issuedacircular on November 7, stating that refunds of the IGST paid on export goods cannot be made in many cases due to errors in export report/manifest (EGM), shipping bill and GSTR1 returns of outward supplies for July The CBEC said that common errors include incorrect shipping bill number in July GSTR1 (that can be corrected only through Table 9 of August GSTR1), mismatch of invoice number and IGST paid amount in the shipping bill and GSTR1, mismatch of

Manufacturing activity pushes up GDP growth Manufacturing activity in India rebounded in the second quarter (Q2) of FY18, as companies ramped up production to meet the festive demand, pushing up overall economic growth.Investment activity also witnessed an uptick after lackluster performance in the last two quarters. Over the last two quarters, economic growth in India had slowed down, as the economy dealt with the twin shocks of demonetisation and the goods and services tax (GST). But gross value added (GVA) rebounded in Q2 FY18, growing by 6.1 per cent, up from 5.6 per cent in Q1. Core GVA, which excludes agriculture and government spending, grew by 6.8 per cent —up from 5.5 per cent in Q1, as government spending slowed down sharply.It had dipped toalow of 3.8 per cent in Q4 FY17. This rebound in growth is driven by the manufacturing sector.The sector grew by 7 per cent in Q2, adding 1.28 percentage points to growth.In the previous quarter, manufacturing value added had grown b

Remove long term capital gains tax exemption Bourse says exchequer could be losing Rs 49,000 cr a year One of the most important stock market participants is making a case for reinstating of long-term capital gains (LTCG) tax on equity investments. According to sources, the BSE has made a presentation to the Union finance ministry that LTCG exemptions cause huge revenue loss to the government and also lead to market manipulation. LTCG is tax-exempt on the sale of listed securities, since 2005. This had made India one of the most liberal markets in this regard, the BSE said in a presentation last Friday. LTCG are profits on sale of shares on a stock exchange platform after a holding period of at least a year. Short-term capital gains (STCG) are profits on sale of shares held for less than 12 months; these are taxed at a flat 15 per cent. “Since India has one of the lowest tax collection to GDP (gross domestic product) ratio within G-20 countries, every effort must be taken to