INLAND WATERWAYS AUTHORITY RAISES RS 660 CRORE THROUGH BONDS
New Delhi, Oct 13: The Inland Waterways Authority of India (IWAI) has raised Rs 660 crore through bonds and the proceeds will be utilised exclusively to develop National Waterways, the government said.
“The IWAI has raised Rs 660 crore as ‘GOI Fully Serviced Bonds’. The resources raised by way of bonds are in addition to the budgetary support from the Government of India. The Government had taken a decision to enable IWAI to raise Rs 660 crore through GOI Fully Serviced Bonds in 2017-18,” Ministry of Shipping said in a statement.
The IWAI had engaged arrangers, credit rating agencies, registrars and trustees prior to raising the bonds.
Both CRISIL and CARE rated the proposed instrument of IWAI as “AAA: STABLE”.
“The e-bidding for raising the bonds was organised on 11th October, 2017 on the BSE Portal with the issue size of Rs 300 crore and Green Shoe option of Rs 360 crore,” the statement said.
It said the issue was oversubscribed and the entire amount of Rs 660 crore has been raised in single tranche at a coupon rate of 7.47 per cent.
“The proceeds from the Bonds are intended to be utilised by IWAI exclusively for capital expenditure for development of National Waterways (NWs) under National Waterway Act, 2016 during 2017-18,” the statement said.
Parliament recently had given nod to declare 106 rivers across the country as National Waterways in addition to the existing 5.
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GOA PRIVATE SECTOR MUST GIVE MORE JOBS TO LOCALS: MINISTER
Panaji, Oct 13 () Goa minister Vijai Sardesai said the private sector should give preference in jobs to locals as the state government departments have more than the required staff.
He said the government sector in the state was “over employed” and the administration was willing to relax rules and give incentives to enable the private entities to provide more jobs to Goans.
The town and country planning minister maintained to have reverse migration of the Goan youth, jobs in the private sector need to be tapped.
“We should be able to provide employment within the state for the youth to prevent them from living for greener pastures outside Goa,” Sardesai tod reporters after addressing a function at Verna Industrial Estate.
He said Goa was one of the most “over employed” states in the government sector.
“As the town and country planning minister, I am willing to give incentives (to industries). In lieu of that, I want more (job) opportunities for the Goan youth.”
Rubbishing claims that industries are averse to employ locals because the state has long celebrations for which they have to give frequent leaves to staffers, Sardesai said “If you come to Goa and set up industries, then respect Goan ethos and grow with it.”
Sardesai, who is also in-charge of the factories and boilers department, said certain provisions in the Factories Act can be relaxed to ensure industries employ more locals.
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UBS SEES 0.5% FISCAL SLIPPAGE ON STIMULUS, LOWER REVENUES
Mumbai, Oct 13 () As government mulls a possible stimulus package to revive the economy, Swiss brokerage has estimated a slippage of 0.5 per cent on the 3.2 per cent fiscal deficit target for the current year.
“We believe the Centre will likely breach the FY18 fiscal deficit target of 3.2 per cent of GDP by 0.5 per cent if its goes about with a fiscal stimulus package,” analysts at UBS Securities said in a note.
“The government is contemplating deviating from budget targets, which could result in fiscal slippages,” the note said.
They analysts said the slippage will be on lower revenue collections through Excise duty cuts, lower telecom collections, lower RBI dividend transfer and also higher expenditure, where government has front-loaded spending and a possible stimulus to boost domestic demand.
As of August, the government has already touched 96.1 per cent of its full year fiscal deficit.
Earlier this month, the Reserve Bank had warned against any slippages in the fiscal math, saying it will stoke inflation and also hurt the macroeconomic stability.
“The national fiscal stance can hardly be described as tight…In other words, we should be very cautious lest fiscal actions undercut macroeconomic stability,” Governor Urjit Patel had said.
It can be noted that the global rating agencies also take a very negative view of any slippage on the fiscal front and have in the past warned about cutting the sovereign rating to junk status for fiscal imprudence.
The UBS report said states are also likely to exceed their targets because of factors like the rash of farm loan waiver announcements and a jump in employee salaries as they implement new wage panel recommendations.
The combined fiscal deficit, including that of the states and the Centre will come at 6.7 per cent, as against government target of 5.8 per cent and 6.2 per cent a year ago, the report said.
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TCS Q2 NET PROFIT RISES 8.4% ON YEAR TO RS 6,446 CRORE
NEW DELHI: TCS or Tata Consultancy Services, India’s largest IT services firm on Thursday kicked off the earnings season with a better than expected 8.4 per cent year-on-year rise in net profit at Rs 6,446 crore for the July-September quarter.
Sequentially, the company saw a 2 per cent dip in the net profit during the reporting quarter.
Revenue for the reporting period rose 3.2 per cent compared to the previous quarter. The year-on-year revenue rose 4.3 per cent to Rs 30,541 crore for the quarter.
The TCS earnings were announced after the stock markets closed for the day. The company announced an interim dividend of Rs 7 per share.
Income from operations rose 4.3 per cent to Rs 30,541 crore.
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IDEA, VODAFONE MAY ALSO OFFER 4G SMARTPHONES
MUMBAI | DELHI: Mobile phone users looking to upgrade to smartphones will have plenty of options this festive season with Idea Cellular and Vodafone India set to join Bharti Airtel in offering 4G phones at effective price of around or less than Rs 1,5
Both Vodafone and Kumar Mangalam Birla-owned Idea are in talks with domestic handset makers including Lava and Karbonn to jointly roll out a new set of smartphones in the Rs 1,500 range to take on Sunil Mittal-owned Airtel and Mukesh Ambani-owned Reliance Jio Infocomm, people familiar with the development told ET.
Airtel on Wednesday had announced the launch of an entry-level 4G smartphone at an ‘effective price’ of Rs 1,399 in tie-up with handset maker Karbonn while newcomer Jio offers its 4G featurephone Jio Phone at a security deposit of Rs 1,500. Now, Idea and Vodafone, which are in the process of a mega-merger to create the country’s largest telco, are set to join the race to woo the pool of 500 million mobile users who do not have smartphones. Sources at both Lava and Karbonn confirmed talks with mobile operators. They are looking to finalise deals before Diwali.
“We’re in discussions with all three telcos but plans have not been finalised,” said Gaurav Nigam, product head at Lava. He refused to name any telco his firm is in talks with.
Sources said the homegrown company said they will not bring down the prices of its existing models but will work out enticing new offers in partnership with the telcos. Vodafone and Idea did not respond to ET’s mails as of press time Thursday.
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KIRANA STORES FASTEST GROWTH CHANNEL FOR FMCG: STUDY
NEW DELHI: Forget modern trade. Kirana stores are proving to be the growth engines for the Indian Fast Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) market, finds a study. These neighbourhood mom-and-pop stores account for at least three-fourth of overall FMCG sales in the country and have been growing faster compared with any other channels.
This has prompted market researcher Nielsen to partner with Bengaluru-based tech startup SnapBizz to embark on a large-scale exercise to digitise kirana stores across the country . You will soon be able to not only track stock of goods at your neighbourhood kirana store but order through your smartphone app as well. While currently, SnapBizz has digitised around 3,000 stores across the country , it plans to increase the number to 10,000 and follow it up with more to reach scale. There are more than 10 million kirana stores in India.
The stores are equipped with tablets and LED screens and run on proprietary software provided by SnapBizz. Nielsen will be able to gain real-time insights from orders placed by consumers.
“Access to this wealth of data offers a unique opportu nity to manufacturers to optimize their go-to-market efforts in traditional trade that has often been considered a “black-box”,” said Prayag Bhatia, executive director of Nielsen.
According to data from SnapBizz, consumers who visit modern trade stores usually end up buying 35% more than what they intended. In comparison, lack of visibility of products causes kirana stores to lose out and consumers buy 95-105% of what they originally intended.
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EXPORTERS TO GET GST REFUND IN BANK A/C FILED WITH CUSTOMS
New Delhi, Oct 13 () The government has decided to give GST refund to exporters in the bank accounts they have filed with the customs department and not in those they have mentioned in the GST registration forms.
The Central Board of Excise and Customs (CBEC) said it has asked exporters to align their bank account details declared to the customs with that of GST regime.
Under the GST rules, refund is to be credited in the bank account mentioned in the registration particulars. Besides, exporters have been declaring details of bank account to customs authorities for the purpose of drawback etc.
The CBEC said that there is a possibility that bank account details available with the customs department do not match with those declared in the GST registration form.
“In order to ensure smooth processing and payment of refund of IGST paid on exported goods, it has been decided that said refund amount shall be credited to the bank account of the exporter registered with customs even if it is different from the bank account of the applicant mentioned in his registration particulars,” the CBEC said.
It also advised exporters to either change the bank account declared to customs to align it with their GST registration particulars or add the account declared with Customs in their GST registration details for smooth transfer of refund.
Revenue Secretary Hasmukh Adhia had earlier this week said that the government will clear pending GST refunds of exporters by November-end. Over July-August, an estimated Rs 67,000 crore has accumulated as the Integrated GST (IGST), of which only about Rs 5,000-10,000 crore will be due as refunds to exporters.
For claiming the refunds, exporters have to fill Table 6A while filing GSTR-1 for July, August and September.