GST, the government’s biggest tax reform, sets rates from 28 per cent to 5 per cent on most items, replacing an array of central and state duties.

To simplify the indirect tax regime, the government moved most goods to a reduced GST rate.

The Goods and Services Tax (GST) Council removed seven items from the 28 per cent tax bracket, the government said in a statement on Saturday. Six items – such as pulleys gear boxes, monitors and TVs (up to 32 inches), digital cameras  and video game consoles – moved from 28 per cent to 18 per cent while one item – parts and accessories for carriages for people with disabilities – moved from 28 per cent to 5 per cent, the release added. Now, the 28 per cent slab is restricted to only luxury and sin goods, apart from auto parts and cement — tax rates on which could not be cut due to the high revenue implication. The new GST rates will be effective from January 1, 2019, Finance Ministry Arun Jaitley said while briefing reporters after the 31st GST Council meeting.

The GST Council has also removed four items from 18 per cent slab. Three items – such as articles of natural cork – moved from 18 per cent to 12 per cent while one – marble rubble – moved from 18 per cent to 5 per cent.  Total four items have been moved from 12 per cent slab while three items have been moved to 5 per cent such as natural cork and walking stick

GST rate reduction will have an overall impact on revenue of Rs. 5500 crore, said Mr Jaitley. 

Due date for GST annual return and audit report has also been extended till June 30, 2019. 

GST, the government’s biggest tax reform, sets rates from 28 per cent to 5 per cent on most items, replacing an array of central and state duties.

Mumbai,  The 30-scrip Sensitive Index (Sensex) on Friday opened on a negative note during the morning trade session.

The Sensex of the BSE which had closed on Thursday at 36,431.67, opened on Friday at 36,449.27, touched a high of 36,450.36 and a low of 36,327.31.

The Sensex is trading at 36,394.06 down by 37.61 points or 0.10 per cent.

On the other hand, the broader 50-scrip Nifty at the National Stock Exchange (NSE) opened at 10,944.25 points after closing at 10,951.70 points.

The Nifty is trading at 10,938.20 points in the morning.

New Delhi, Dec 20 (IANS) Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Thursday said the government will infuse Rs 83,000 crore in public sector banks in the remaining part of the fiscal taking the total recapitalisation of banks during the year to Rs 1.06 lakh crore.

“Today we have asked for the parliamentary sanction for (issuing) additional recapitalisation bonds of Rs 41,000 crore… As of today, of the Rs 65,000 crore recapitalisation plan for 2018-19, Rs 42,000 crore is still remaining. 

“Therefore, with this additional Rs 41,000 crore, we will now have Rs 83,000 crore for the balance year and that will make this year’s recap to a total of Rs 1.06 lakh crore,” Jaitley said after tabling the Supplementary Demands for Grants in the Lok Sabha.

The second batch of Supplementary Demands for Grants for 2018-19 involving a gross spending of Rs 85,948.86 crore includes the package of Rs 41,000 crore for banks. It will not require any additional cash outgo as the capital infusion is planned through bonds.

Jaitley said the distribution process for the Rs 83,000 crore capital infusion in state-run banks will be decided on the basis of performance of banks by the Department of Financial Services (DFS). About Rs 23,000 crore have already been infused this fiscal.

Capital infusion will be done under four heads to help banks meet regulatory capital norms, help better performing banks under RBI’s Prompt Corrective Action (PCA) to get out of it, facilitate non-PCA banks that are near the “red-line” and to strengthen amalgamated banks.

Financial Services Secretary Rajeev Kumar said the capital infusion will help at least four of the total 11 PCA banks meet their regulatory capital norms. Overall strengthening of the banks will encourage lending and thereby economic growth of the country.

“We have made provisions to give capital to 4-5 banks (in PCA) depending on performance and on the Q2 and Q3 results. The figures will be decided (later) but there are chances that we equip at least 3 to 5 banks to meet the norms,” he said.

As per the current regulatory norms, the PCA banks will have to achieve 9 per cent Capital to Risk-weighted Asset Ratio (CRAR), 1.875 per cent Capital Conservation Buffer and the 6 per cent net non-performing assets (NPA) threshold to come out of PCA and restart lending.

“About the PCA banks, the performances we are looking at is the lower level and declining trend of net NPAs, whichever PCA bank has shown better performance in terms of reduction in NPAs and the improvements in return on assets. Name of these banks will be worked out.”

Kumar said there are three non-PCA banks that are near the threshold and in the danger of falling into the PCA category. These banks, including Punjab National Bank, will be provided capital to strengthen their base, he said.

There are three to four banks namely State Bank of India, Bank of Baroda, Indian Bank and Vijaya Bank that have maintained regulatory capital even higher than the prescribed minimum and would not need any capital infusion.

“The process of NPA recognition that started in 2015 is almost complete. The last quarter has showed improved performance. While recognition of NPAs peaked at 7 per cent in March 2015, it has now come down to 0.59 per cent as of September 2018,” Jaitley said.

The government had initiated a comprehensive clean-up of the banking system under its 4R’s approach of recognition, resolution, recapitalisation and reforms. Since 2015-16 till end of this fiscal, the total capital infusion in public sector banks will be over Rs 3 lakh crore.

“The NPAs recognition is complete, recapitalisation is in full swing, it has been enhanced further, recovery is also in full swing, the last H1 (April-September 2018) recovery is to the tune of Rs 60,726 crore,” Kumar said.

The trend is likely to continue as the creditor-debtor relationship has changed because of the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (IBC) and debarment of the connected parties, he said.

“PSBs are showing tremendous improvement in terms of recognition, in terms of provisioning, recovery, reforms and therefore this is the time that we empower them and equip them with the capital so that the banks are ready to support the fastest growing economy,” he added.

Chennai,  With the failure of conciliation talks, about 10 lakh bankers in private and government banks will go on strike on December 26 protesting against the merger of Bank of Baroda, Dena Bank and Vijaya Bank, the All India Bank Employees Association (AIBEA) said on Thursday.

“During the conciliation meeting held in Delhi today (Thursday), the Additional Chief Labour Commissioner advised the three banks and IBA (Indian Banks Association) to hold negotiations with the unions and convey the Union’s concerns to the government,” AIBEA General Secretary C.H. Venkatachalam told IANS.

“No assurance came from either IBA or the government. Hence the conciliation talks failed and the December 26 strike stands,” Venkatachalam added.

The AIBEA is part of the nine unions in the banking sector under the umbrella body of United Forum of Bank Unions (UFBU).

According to Venkatachalam, the strike was only against the bank mergers and there was no deadlock on the wage revision talks with IBA.

India is largely unbanked or underbanked with low density of banks. Mergers will kill bank branches while the focus should be on recovering the huge outstanding loans, the AIBEA said.

With Christmas on December 25, banks would effectively be closed for two days, affecting the banking public.

Though the bankers had wanted the strike on December 24, a Monday, for a bigger impact as the banks would then be closed for four consecutive days (December 22-25), the unions decided to strike on December 26 to lessen the impact on public.

Ahead of the strike called by the United Forum of Bank Unions (UFBU) on December 26, one of the bank officers’ union has called a strike on December 21, demanding an unconditional mandate for the XIth bipartite wage revision talks, officials said on Wednesday.In the wake of strikes and holidays, the banks will remain closed from next Friday to Wednesday, except Monday and the banking services could adversely be affected on these days.The banks will remain closed on December 22 and 23 on account of fourth Saturday and Sunday respectively. December 25 will be a national holiday for Christmas.“We called the strike on December 21 demanding a full and unconditional mandate for the XIth bipartite wage revision talks based on a charter of demands submitted in May, 2017. No headway has been made in the process so far even after 19 months since discussion on wage revision began,” All India Bank Officers Confederation’s (AIBOC) Assistant General Secretary Sajay Das said.According to him, over 3.2 lakh officers of the union would participate in the strike as “no perceptible initiative” was observed from Indian Banks’ Association to impress upon the five banks who have not yet submitted the unconditional mandate”.The union opposed the current move to restrict the salary settlements only up to Scale III by citing non-receipt of the ‘unconditional mandates’ from five banks as a reason whereas 15 banks from the public sector and two private banks have already given ‘unconditional mandates’.“AIBOC believes that it is nothing but a farcical logic to restrict the wage negotiations up to the officers in scale III whereas the entire officer community is covered under unified Service Regulations,” the statement said.During the strike on Friday, services at ATMs are expected to be “normal” while on December 26, ATM services would also be affected.The strike call also features “the burning issue of the announcement proposing to merge three public sector banks – Bank of Baroda, Vijaya Bank and Dena Bank — and the consolidation of Regional Rural Banks, union’s West Bengal unit President Subhujyoti Chattopadahyay said.

San Francisco,  Google has denied it altered YouTube code to break Microsoft Edge, thus slowing down its performance while users streamed YouTube videos — a claim made by a former Microsoft intern.

Microsoft Edge is a graphical web browser included in Windows 10, Windows 10 Mobile and Xbox One devices, replacing Internet Explorer as the default web browser.

According to a report in The Verge on Wednesday, Google disputed the claims made by Joshua Bakita, a former software engineering intern at Microsoft, who said that the company added a “hidden empty div over YouTube videos” that slowed down streaming on Microsoft Edge.

According to Google, it merely fixed a bug in YouTube.

“YouTube does not add code designed to defeat optimizations in other browsers, and works quickly to fix bugs when theya¿re discovered,” a YouTube spokesperson was quoted as saying.

Microsoft, however, was yet to comment on the specific claim made by its former intern.

“Google has been a helpful partner and we look forward to the journey as we work on the future of Microsoft Edge,” it told The Verge.

Earlier, in a post on Hacker News, Bakita revealed details of a YouTube incident that convinced some Edge browser engineers that Google added code to purposely break compatibility.

“One of the reasons we (Microsoft) decided to end EdgeHTML was because Google kept making changes to its sites that broke other browsers, and we couldn’t keep up,” claimed Bakita.

Google added a “hidden empty div over YouTube videos” that affected Microsoft’s hardware acceleration for videos, he added.

A Mozilla Firefox programme manager also claimed recently that a separate YouTube redesign made the site “5x slower in Firefox and Edge.”

Earlier this month, Microsoft said it plans to adopt the Chromium open source project for the development of its Edge browser.

Washington, Online retail giant Amazon has been slammed by several Sikh bodies for reportedly selling doormats, rugs and toilet accessories bearing the image of the highly-revered Golden Temple and was asked to immediately remove the “disrespectful products” that hurt the sentiments of the community worldwide.

Prominent community body in the US, the Sikh Coalition, said in a statement on Tuesday that it was alerted to Amazon selling doormats, rugs and toilet seat covers with the image of Golden Temple. 

In response, the civil rights organisation said it “immediately contacted Amazon to remove the products while detailing the culturally insensitive problems with the items being sold and the offensive message it sent to Sikhs around the world”.

“The Golden Temple is not a doormat,” it tweeted, adding that in the hours since, through community outreach, several pages had been removed from the Amazon portal. 

Another group, NGO United Sikhs, issued a statement calling on Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos to do the same and said it had received “numerous complaints” from members of the community about the products.

Some of the items had been removed from the website on Wednesday, but the Golden Temple toilet accessories remained available, the group said.

“It’s shocking and extremely disappointing that Amazon offers these products for sale,” said United Sikhs operations manager Rajesh Singh.

“The merchandise featuring the disrespectful placement of Darbar Sahib shows a total lack of understanding on behalf of Amazon and its employees. We demand Bezos address this issue immediately.”

The group offered “Sikh awareness training” in “an effort to educate Amazon’s staff and prevent anti-Sikh products from being sold on the site in the future”.

It also “reached out to the manufacturers of the merchandise to demand their production to be ceased immediately”.

 (15:50) 

New Delhi, Chinese handset manufacturer nubia on Wednesday launched a gaming smartphone Red Magic in India for Rs 29,999.

The smartphone would be available on Amazon.in from December 20, the company said in a statement.

The 5.99-inches full-HD smartphone is packed with an optimised Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 chipset with 8GB RAM and dual-lane 128GB Universal Flash Storage (UFS) 2.1 storage.

“The launch of Red Magic has especially been crafted for the rising gaming community in India and will be a benchmark in its segment,” said Dheeraj Kukreja, Director, nubia India.

The device runs Android 8.1 Oreo and houses 3800mAh battery.

“We truly believe that with some of the unparalleled features like RGB strip, GameBoost Mode, Cooling Fans, 3800mAh battery that we have packed in this revolutionary device, the experience will be power packed in every way,” Kukreja added.

The smartphone sports a 24MP rear camera and a 8MP selfie shooter.

Facebook gave large tech companies access to users’ data, including private messages, New York Times reports.20 minutes ago

Facebook has given some of the world’s largest tech companies, such as Spotify, Amazon and Netflix, access to users’ personal information in ways not previously disclosed, according to a report released by the New York Times (NYT).

In the report, published on Tuesday, NYT says internal Facebook documents provided insights into the network’s “data-sharing agreements,” revealing that the data market is “even bigger than many consumers suspected”.

According to the publication, Facebook allowed big companies like Microsoft with its Bing search engine to “view names of virtually all Facebook users’ friends without consent”. In addition, streaming services such as Netflix, Spotify were able to access “users’ private messages,” including the ability to “read, compose and delete messages, and to see all participants on a thread”, NTY reported.

Platforms such as Sony, Microsoft and Amazon could obtain users’ email addresses through their friends, and Yahoo was able to “view streams of friends’ posts”, despite statements saying it had stopped that type of sharing before.

The agreements between the platforms and tech companies applied to more than 150 companies, most of which are technology and online retails sites.

“The deals, the oldest of which date to 2010, were all active in 2017,” NYT reported. “[But] some were still in effect this year.”

The partnership, as explained by the report, allowed Facebook to grow by bringing new users, and encourage them to use the platform, while the companies in return “acquired features to make their products more attractive.”

In 2012, Facebook was asked by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to strengthen privacy safeguards, 
as the data-sharing deals likely “violated the consent agreement, since users had no way of knowing which companies Facebook shared their data with, and no clear means of granting or withholding permission.”

Facebook maintains that none of these partnerships or features gave companies access to information without “people’s permission, nor did they violate the settlement with the FTC”.

Different scandals 

Facebook has faced multiple scandals in recent years. 

Earlier this year, it was revealed that 87 million users’ data was accessed by the UK data firm Cambridge Analytica, without proper user consent.READ MORE

Cambridge Analytica and Facebook: The scandal so far

Acknowledging that it had breached users’ trust, Facebook insisted that it implemented stricter privacy protections and Mark Zuckerberg, the chief executive, assured lawmakers in April that people “have complete control” over everything they share on Facebook.

However, as recently as last week it was also reported that a bug may have exposed millions of Facebook users’ private photos to third party apps. 

Facebook responded to the NYT’s report and said that they do not “ignore people’s privacy settings”.

“Facebook’s partners don’t get to ignore people’s privacy settings, and it’s wrong to suggest that they do,” Steve Satterfield, Facebook’s director of privacy and public policy, said in a statement. 

“Over the years, we’ve partnered with other companies so people can use Facebook on devices and platforms that we don’t support ourselves.

“Unlike a game, streaming music service, or other third-party app, which offer experiences that are independent of Facebook, these partners can only offer specific Facebook features and are unable to use information for independent purposes.”

The platform also responded via a blog post published on Tuesday night.

In the post, the company answered different questions about the partner companies, which the company referred to as “integration partners,” and a specific kind of partnership that ran from 2010 to 2014 called “instant personalisation.”

“To be clear: none of these partnerships or features gave companies access to information without people’s permission,” the social media company said.

Companies also rejected the results of the report. 

A Netflix spokesperson in a statement to Al Jazeera said that it recently have tried various ways to “make Netflix more social.”

In 2014 it launched a feature that “enabled members to recommend TV shows and movies to their Facebook friends via Messenger or Netflix,” but that “at no time did we access people’s private messages on Facebook, or ask for the ability to do so.”

The feature “was never that popular so we shut the feature down in 2015,” Netflix added. 

142 people are talking about thisTwitter Ads info and privacy

Microsoft said that data supplied by Facebook stopped appearing in Bing search results after the contract between the two companies ended in February 2016.

“Throughout our engagement with Facebook, we respected all user preferences,” Microsoft said in a statement.

An Apple spokesman referred CNN to a paragraph in the article citing Apple officials as saying they were unaware of this agreement. 

“Any shared data would remain on the devices and be available to anyone other than the users,” the statement read.

It has been two months since the largest data breach in Facebook’s history and five days since the last time Facebook announced a significant data leak.

Aljazeera

Bengaluru,  Brazil surpassed India to become the most spammed country in the world in 2018, according to a report from popular communication app Truecaller on Tuesday.

More than six per cent of overall calls received by Indian users in 2018 were spam calls. However, the average number of spam calls received in India dropped to 22.3 calls per user/month – 1.5 per cent less than last year, the findings showed. 

On an average, a Truecaller user in Brazil received 37.5 spam calls per month – an 81 per cent increase of spam calls in a year, said the “Truecaller Insight Special Report”.

Chile, South Africa and Mexico are the three other countries among the list of top five countries affected by spam calls this year.

With regard to spam call categorisation, operators and telecom service providers continue to be the top spammers in India with 91 per cent user calls received for the upselling of various offers and balance reminders, Truecaller said in a statement. 

This is followed by scam callers and telemarketers who garnered seven per cent and two per cent of such calls respectively. 

Truecaller said it identified and blocked 17.7 billion spam calls globally, where every fourth call that users received was a spam call.