-The Economic Times The country's chief auditor has uncovered a Rs 1,336-crore negative balance in the books of the Empoyees' Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO), the custodian of Rs 8.15 crore formal sector workers' lifetime savings. A report, prepared by the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) and reviewed by ET, says this discrepancy in the EPFO's books for 2011-12 could grow further. For beneficiaries, this could mean lower returns on provident fund savings...
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Aadhaar must be basis for direct benefit transfers: Ashok Khemka
-The Economic Times The Direct Benefits Transfer (DBT) scheme commenced with the initial rollout in 20 districts covering seven scholarship schemes. Another 23 districts will be covered by March this year. The intention is to link all government benefits to Aadhaar-based identification of beneficiaries and to channelise the cash benefits through Aadhaar-enabled bank accounts. Irrespective of the merits of translating some benefits delivered in kind like in PDS into their cash-equivalent, for...
More »The Guv keeps the bar high -KT Jagannathan
-The Hindu It took nearly three years for the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) to give a final shape to the government’s decision to let more players in the private sector banking field. That by itself offers a clue to the divide in thinking between the fiscal and monetary managers of the Indian economy. When it did come out with guidelines for “Licensing of New Banks in the Private Sector”, the...
More »KV Thomas, Food Minister interviewed by Ragini Verma and Liz Mathew
-Live Mint In an interview, India’s food minister says the Bill is about making the Right to Food a legal entitlement Prospects for the National Food Security (NFS) Bill—United Progressive Alliance (UPA) chairperson Sonia Gandhi’s dream legislation—haven’t looked better. Food minister K.V. Thomas, in charge of fine-tuning the contours of the Bill, is confident of steering it through Parliament during the budget session. In an interview, Thomas said the Bill isn’t merely...
More »It's time to give women more tax sops -Prabhakar Sinha
-The Times of India It isn't just foreign investors who would have remembered the last Budget as a tough one. Even women lost out as the government withdrew tax benefits that were introduced in the form of higher tax exemption limit in 2000-2001. In 2000-01, Yashwant Sinha, the then Finance minister, had introduced a special provision under which the basic tax exemption limit for women was pegged higher than that for men....
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