RBI asked banks to cap bank charges
Jan 12, 2010 RBI
Banks may soon have to cap the charges on basic services such as issuing a draft, remittances or for stop-payment instructions. Faced with a rising number of customer complaints on excessive charges, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has asked the Indian Banks’ Association (IBA) to come up with guidelines on what the reasonable charges should be.
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Tags: bank ceo, cheque books, citibank, customer complaints, excessive charges, foreign banks, hdfc bank, indian banks association, minimum balance requirements, private sector lenders, remittances, reserve bank of india, standard chartered bank, state bank, state bank of india, transaction services, union bank, union bank of india
Government may review / renegotiate DTAA with 76 countries
Dec 8, 2009 Income Tax
As reported by us earlier The government is planning to comprehensively revise tax treaties with as many as 25 nations, including Switzerland and Mauritius, and re-negotiate with 51 others, to trace black money. The government plans a comprehensive revision of the existing tax treaties with 25 countries, including the Swiss Confederation, Mauritius, Malaysia, Norway and the Netherlands among others.
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Tags: australia china, banking account, black money, double taxation avoidance, fishing expedition, foreign banks, swiss bank accounts, swiss bankers association, swiss confederation, tax model, tax treaties
Indian banking makes us jealous
Nov 28, 2009 Finance
After 31st March 2010 Indian banks will have to adhere to the Basel II norms. India had adopted Basel I guidelines in 1999. Later on in February 2005 the RBI had issued draft guidelines for implementing a New Capital Adequacy Framework, in line with Basel II. The deadline for implementing Basel II, originally set for March 31, 2007, has now been extended. Foreign banks in India and Indian banks operating abroad will have to adhere to the guidelines by March 31, 2009.
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Tags: banking laws, banking sector, banks in india, basel committee on banking supervision, business cycle, capital adequacy, draft guidelines, foreign banks, indian banks, interest rate risk, liquidity risk, market discipline, operational risks, prime tool, reputation risk, risk business, risk liquidity, three pillars, what is basel ii
20 year old undergraduate fetch the offer of 32 lakhs per Annum
Nov 27, 2009 General Info
For someone who aspires for a hole-in-one as an amateur golfer, Adit Mathur has made a Tiger Woodsian debut on the job circuit. The 20-year-old undergrad of Shri Ram College of Commerce (SRCC) is now the toast of Delhi University (DU) as he has teed in an offer from Deutsche Bank for an annual compensation package of Rs 32 lakh ($69,000). Mathur, a resident of Civil Lines in Delhi, will be trained in London next year for a plum posting abroad.
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Tags: amateur golfer, audit firm, college of commerce, compensation package, daredevils, delhi university, foreign banks, indian institutions, Lehman Brothers, perquisite, shri ram college, shri ram college of commerce, srcc, undergrads
ICAI issued list of 400 companies for IFRS convergence by April 2011
Nov 16, 2009 Accounting
The Institute of Chartered Accountants of India (ICAI) has brought out a list of over 400 companies that should converge their accounting practices with International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) by April 2011.
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Tags: Accounting Standards Board, financial reporting standards, foreign banks, indian railway, institute of chartered accountants, institute of chartered accountants of india, international accounting standards, international accounting standards board, INTERNATIONAL FINANCIAL REPORTING STANDARDS, management information system, venture capital funds
Govt ask RBI to continue appointing auditors for PSU Banks
May 23, 2009 Empanelment, RBI
The government has turned down a proposal of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) to allow public sector banks to select auditors independently.
Last year, RBI had made the proposal to the finance ministry, which forwarded it to the Ministry of Corporate Affairs (MCA), the nodal body for auditors.
The proposal was in line with the practice followed by private and foreign banks that function in the country.
RBI is not directly involved in selection of auditors for private and foreign banks, which, however, have to take prior approval of the central bank for the selection.
Banking sources close to the development say RBI has made the proposal as it wants to get out of its non-core functions.
As part of this, RBI has got out of handling various government businesses and is in the process of exiting direct management of public debt.
The selection of auditors for the public sector banks was a drain on the manpower since the process was tedious, given the importance of the job, said an official source.
Under the present system, the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India ( ICAI) sends RBI a list of auditors for empanelment as auditors for public sector banks. After this, RBI selects the auditors on the basis of their experience, nature of job and competence.
Sources said even if RBI got just an indirect role. the selection would continue to be handled by the government.
However, the government preferred to let RBI handle the selection and had intimated this to the central bank, they said.
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Tags: appointment, Audit, Auditor, Bank, central, chartered accountants of india, Empanelment, foreign banks, ICAI, institute of chartered accountants, list of auditors, psu, psu banks, public sector banks, RBI, securities and exchange board of india
Indian Government Provided forged documents : Swiss government
May 12, 2009 General Info
In a major embarrassment for the Indian government, the Swiss Justice Department on Monday said it had received forged documents from New Delhi two years ago in connection with an alleged Rs.40,000 crore ($8 billion) money laundering case involving racehorse breeder Hassan Ali.
“The documents submitted are forged,” Folco Galli, a spokesperson for the Swiss government, told a private Indian TV channel Monday. He said the Indian government was dragging its feet on the issue of retrieving black money believed to be stashed away in foreign banks.
The official said the Indian government had submitted forged documents to the Swiss authorities in January 2007 in the $8 billion Hassan Ali money laundering case. Pune-based stud farm owner Ali is alleged to have illegally transferred the money to Swiss bank accounts and had come on the Enforcement Directorate’s radar.
Galli also claimed the Swiss government submitted certain queries to its Indian counterpart in April 2007 but had not received a reply even 24 months later.
“India makes only few requests per year to Switzerland for legal aid in tracking down black money,” he said.
The black money issue has become a major campaign topic in the Lok Sabha polls, with the Bharatiya Janata Party promising that if voted to power it would bring back the billions of rupees stashed away abroad. The United Progressive Alliance government has claimed in the Supreme Court that it has been doing what it can to bring back the black money.
Tags: enforcement directorate, foreign banks, hassan ali, india, indian counterpart, indian government, racehorse breeder, stud farm, swiss authorities, swiss bank accounts, swiss government
Service Tax department clarified DICGC Premium is exempt from service tax
Mar 25, 2009 Service Tax
Revenue authorities have done banks a good turn towards the close of the financial year.
By clarifying that the deposit insurance premium, collected by the Deposit Insurance and Credit Guarantee Corporation (DICGC), is not taxable, the authorities have saved banks, which ultimately would have borne this burden, from paying taxes totting up to a few thousand crore rupees.
The Commissionerate of Central Excise and Service Tax, Large Taxpayer Unit, Mumbai, in its missive to the Corporation in early January 2009 had underscored the fact that deposit insurance activity is liable to service tax (at 12.36 per cent) with effect from May 1, 2006.
The Corporation, which is the sole provider of deposit insurance services for banks, in turn, cautioned banks through a circular in January that “in case service tax is applicable on the deposit insurance premium, then all banks may have to pay the same at short notice, over and above the premium being paid as per the relevant rate.”
After the DICGC took up the matter with the Commissionerate, the latter cleared the air saying “the charges collected by DICGC are not taxable under the taxable service of ‘General Insurance Service’.
According to RBI data, banks had deposits aggregating around Rs 34,42,000 crore as of end-September 2008. If the authorities had pressed their claim then a rough, back-of-the-envelope calculation shows that banks collectively would have had to shell out around Rs 4,250 crore towards service tax on deposit insurance for just the first half of the year. The impact on banks could have been several times this amount if revenue authorities demanded arrears from May 2006.
All registered insured banks (commercial banks, including branches of foreign banks in India, regional rural banks, local area banks, and co-operative banks) are required to pay to the DICGC deposit insurance premium at the rate of 10 paise a year for every deposit of Rs 100 at half-yearly intervals.
Governed by the DICGC Act, 1961, the corporation insures bank deposits such as savings, fixed, current, and recurring up to Rs 1 lakh a depositor/bank. The premium paid by the insured banks to DICGC is required to be absorbed by the banks themselves; for depositors, the benefit of this service is free of cost.
Tags: banks in india, central excise and service tax, credit guarantee corporation, deposit insurance, Excise, foreign banks, insurance premium, RBI, Service Tax on DICGC