With petrol and diesel rates skyrocketing on a daily basis, Road Transport and Highways Minister Nitin Gadkari on Friday advocated bringing fuel under the GST to curb the price hike.

“Petrol and diesel should have been brought under the Goods and Services Tax. I asked officials during a presentation if we bring fuel prices under GST will it benefit the states or not.

“They said ‘yes’, they will benefit,” Gadkari said at a news conclave here on the four years of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government.

He said, however, the states were wary of losing revenue on account of taxes they collect from fuel prices and liquor.

“It will be good if fuel prices are brought under GST. This will not only reduce the fuel prices but will also increase the government’s revenue.”

He, however, said it was his personal opinion, and the ultimate decision regarding this remained with the Petroleum Ministry.

The Minister said fuel prices were surging because of international crude oil rate.

“Earlier, we were giving subsidy on the import (of fuels). When the rates came down, the subsidy was removed. We are part of a global economy…The price of petrol and diesel are increasing due to rise of their price in international rates.”

He said the money that was saved from removing subsidy on fuel allowed the government to give free Liquid Petroleum Gas (LPG) connections to eight crore families across India.

The Union Cabinet’s decision to issue an Ordinance to make necessary changes in the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (IBC) for easing the norms for participation of the promoters of the companies in the resolution of their stressed assets, especially Micro, Small and medium Enterprises, will expedite resolution of NPA cases in a big way, said FICCI.

“Enabling MSME promoters to bid for their companies under the IBC resolution process will help in speedy resolution in a large number of cases. Easing of the norms for genuine promoters to take part in the resolution process associated with their company will act as a catalyst in the government and RBI’s efforts towards stressed asset resolution,” said Rashesh Shah, President, FICCI.

“While there is a need to keep the errant promoters out of the bidding process for their companies under IBC is a necessity, it is also equally important to give a fair chance to the genuine promoters to be part of the resolution process,” he added.

“Additionally, the decision to treat homebuyers on par with financial creditors will also prove to be a substantial relief for a large section of the society, and will also give a boost to the real-estate sector,” Shah added.

He highlighted that higher bids placed for the stressed assets under the IBC process show that it has already started working, and Tata Steel’s acquisition of Bhushan Steel is a clear indication of the potential of the IBC framework in the resolution of the NPA cases.

Hindusthan Samachar/Shri Ram Shaw

Already under fire for misuse of users’ data after the Cambridge Analytica scandal came to light, a new filing in a California lawsuit now alleges that Facebook collected information on users and their friends through its apps.

The filing is part of a suit brought against Facebook in 2015 by now-defunct startup Six4Three, CNET reported on Thursday.

The claims were made in a filing submitted last week to the superior court in San Mateo, California, the report said.

To collect the information, Facebook used several methods including tracking users’ locations, reading their text messages and accessing their photos on phones, according to the allegations as reported by the Guardian.

Documents filed in the court draw upon extensive confidential emails and messages between Facebook senior executives, the report said.

A Facebook representative said the claims had no merit and contended that the social network does not log people’s call and text history without their consent.

In March, Facebook admitted it collected data from people’s calls and texts but said it had prior consent.

However the Guardian reported that it logged some messages without explicitly notifying users.

Six4Three is suing Facebook over its app Pikinis, which allowed users to zoom in on bikini photos.

It alleges that Facebook tracked users, sometimes without their express consent.

A Rs 4 per litre increase in petrol and diesel prices is in the offing if state-owned fuel retailers are to return to pre-Karnataka poll hiatus margin levels, brokerage firms said.

No sooner had Karnataka polled to elect a new state government, state-owned Indian Oil Corp (IOCNSE -0.72 %), Hindustan PetroleumNSE -0.28 % Corp Ltd (HPCL) and Bharat Petroleum Corp Ltd (BPCLNSE -1.95 %) on Monday ended a 19-day hiatus in revising petrol and diesel prices and reverted to the practices of of changing rates on a daily basis.
Since then petrol price has risen by 69 paisa a litre, including a 22 paisa hike effected today that took rate in Delhi to Rs 75.32, the highest in almost five years. Diesel prices have gone up by 86 paisa a litre, including 22 paisa increase today that took the rate to their highest ever of Rs 66.79 a litre in Delhi.

“Our computation suggests that downstream oil marketing companies (OMCs) are required to increase retail prices of diesel by a steep Rs 3.5-4 a litre and gasoline (petrol)by Rs 4-4.55 per litre in the coming weeks to earn normative gross marketing margins of Rs 2.7/litre,” Kotak Institutional Equities said in a report.

The increase is based on assumption that global price of diesel and petrol and Rupee-US Dollar exchange rate remain stable hereon.

“We note that the lack of price hikes over the past three weeks, before Karnataka elections amid a sharp increase in global crude/product prices, has resulted in sharp moderation in gross marketing margins to around Rs 0.5-0.7 a liter,” it said.
Last week, ICICI Securities had said that auto fuel net marketing margins were weak at Rs 0.31 a litre due to no price hike after April 24.

OMCs returned to daily price revision from May 14. They are estimated to have lost about Rs 500 crore on absorbing higher cost resulting from the spike in international oil rates and fall in rupee against the US dollar.

The benchmark international rate for petrol, used for revising rate on April 24, had gone up from USD 78.84 per barrel toper barrel to USD 82.98 on May 14. It has further risen to USD 83.30, indicating more daily hikes would be needed to level retail price with cost.

Similarly, benchmark international diesel rates during this period have climbed from USD 84.68 per barrel to USD 88.93. Also, the rupee has weakened to Rs 67.06 per US dollar from Rs 66.62, making imports costlier.

In line with the government’s Digital India programme, Nokia on Wednesday launched a “Smartpur” digital village project with the aim of developing 500 digitally integrated villages across the country in five years.

“India is on the brink of a phenomenal digital journey which can only be successful if it is all inclusive,” said Ambassador of Finland to India Nina Vaskunlahti after inaugurating a pilot of the project in Tain village of Nuh district in Haryana.

“Smartpur project is a significant step in that direction which will integrate these villages and rural communities, providing digital tools and Internet connectivity for social and economic impact that truly makes a village smart and fosters a digitally inclusive society,” she added.

With the Smartpur project, Nokia said it aims to create a sustainable ecosystem in villages where community members can leverage digital tools to bring efficiency in daily lives, transparency in governance, economic prosperity for households and ease of access to various government services and information.

The project will work under the five key areas of development – health, education, livelihood, governance and finance – to build a holistic, digitally integrated village, the Finnish telecom gear maker said.

“The Smartpur initiative is our contribution to delivering the benefits of broadband infrastructure and services to the ‘telecom-dark’ areas and support the government’s vision of Digital India for a more inclusive growth,” said Sanjay Malik, head of India for Nokia.

According to the International Telecom Union ICT (information and communications technology) Facts and Figures, 20 per cent of households in developed countries and as many as 66 per cent of households in developing countries do not have Internet access, leaving almost four billion people from developing countries offline.

Nearly a billion of these unconnected people live in India, mostly in rural India.

“At Nokia, we believe connecting the unconnected opens up opportunities in many areas and has tremendous potential to enable socio-economic empowerment of individual as well as communities,” Malik said.

In the first phase of the project, 20 villages will be digitally integrated in Haryana and Tamil Nadu in a “hub and spoke” model.

Tain village in Nuh district of Haryana and Asoor in Kanchipuram district, Tamil Nadu, will serve as hub which will host a digital centre with telecom connectivity to provide ICT-enabled, primary services.

The spoke centres will further extend these services to nine other villages from each hub, Nokia said.

In the second phase, the project will be scaled-up to up to another 80 villages across various states and subsequently, it will be extended to another 400 villages over a period of five years, it added.

With an aim to make its platform more user-friendly, Facebook-owned WhatsApp on Tuesday rolled out better administrative controls and other features for Groups.

Under “Admin controls” in Group settings, there’s now a control that allows admins to restrict who can change the group’s subject, icon and description.

A short blurb is found under Group info that allows you to set the purpose, guidelines or topics for the group.

“When a new person joins a group, the description will show up at the top of the chat,” WhatsApp said in a blog post.

“Group catch up” feature will let users catch up on messages that mention or reply to them by tapping on a new @ button that appears at the bottom right corner of the chat.

“Admins can now remove admin permissions of other group participants, and group creators can no longer be removed from the group they started,” the Facebook-owned company said.

In addition, WhatsApp has also made it harder for people to be re-added to Groups they have left.

These features are available for Android and iPhone users.

Groups have been an important part of the WhatsApp experience, whether it’s family members connecting across the globe or childhood friends staying in touch over the years.

“There are also people coming together in Groups on WhatsApp like new parents looking for support and city leaders coordinating relief efforts after natural disasters,” the company added.

Star cricketer Mahendra Singh Dhoni has been announced the brand ambassador of online pharmacy Netmeds.com.

Dhoni, who has an “incredibly strong appeal across all sectors and all demographics”, will feature in nationwide marketing campaigns for it.

“Making important medicine more available and affordable is a great thing for the country, and Netmeds is one the mainstays in the space. They have a long legacy in the pharma business and they are making it easier for people to stay healthy,” Dhoni said in a statement.

Netmeds CEO Pradeep Dadha said Dhoni was a perfect fit.

“He rose from humble beginnings and fought against very tough odds, but through hard work and belief in himself, he rose to a position of prominence and became a name whose aura resonates through every household in India. At Netmeds, we believe we have embarked on just such a journey, and with him on board, we’re even more excited about the road that lies ahead.

“When you’re out to beat a tough competitor, Dhoni is the leader you want on your team. Chronic disease is a tough competitor, and we want people to know that we intend to be the team member that helps them win the fight. And he embodies all the core values upon which we have built Netmeds. He’s someone you can really count on. He is a strong and experienced leader and he exemplifies a healthy lifestyle. He also puts ‘family first’.”

Petrol price in India today: As was widely expected, petrol and diesel prices have gone up for the first time since April 24. The hike came right after polling in Karnataka elections concluded on Saturday. state-owned Oil companies IOC, BPCL and HPCL kept petrol rates unchanged for more than three weeks now in various state capitals even as global crude oil prices surged to multi-year highs. OMCs had been mandated for daily revision in fuel prices since June 2017 in tandem with rise or fall in Brent crude price.

IOC, BPCL and HPCL disposed of the daily revision in fuel prices scheme during Gurjarat state assembly elections too in December 2017 wherein they kept revising down the prices for two weeks ahead of election day, and raised those post December 14, 2017, the day voting concluded.

However, Indian Oil Corporation Chairman Sanjiv Singh disagreed last week with this view and said the decision for oil PSUs not to hike petrol and diesel prices since April 24 was aimed at stabilising them and it ‘incidentally’ coincided with Karnataka elections.

The move, he added, is for the benefit of consumers as daily spikes in the range of 25 paise to 35 paise used to result into a change in fuel prices by Rs two or Rs three every 15 days.

“We strongly believe this was unrealistic. So, we thought of stabilizing that, tapering it down to a certain extent. Now incidentally it has coincided with some of the state elections. It was not the intention of oil marketing companies,” he told PTI.

Petrol price in New Delhi today: The petrol price in Delhi rose 17 paise to Rs 74.80, from Rs 74.63 earlier. Diesel price in Delhi rose 23 paise to Rs 66.14 from Rs 65.93 earlier.

Petrol price in Kolkata today: In Kolkata, petrol price stood at Rs 77.50 per litre from Rs 77.32 earlier.

Petrol price in Mumbai today: Petrol has remained four-year high in this city since start of 2018. The price rose to Rs 82.65 from Rs 82.48 earlier.

Petrol price in Chennai today: The petrol price here revised up to Rs 77.61 from Rs 77.43 earlier.

Globally, oil prices on Monday fell away from last week’s multi-year highs as a relentless rise in US drilling activity pointed to increased output, while resistance emerged in Europe and Asia to US sanctions against major crude exporter Iran, reported Reuters.

Still, crude prices remained near more than three-year-highs reached last week as markets expect Iran’s oil exports to fall significantly once U.S. sanctions bite later this year.

Brent crude futures were at $76.79 per barrel, down 33 cents, or 0.4 per cent from their last close. US West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures were at $70.51 a barrel, down 19 cents, or 0.3 per cent.

Brent and WTI last week reached their highest since November 2014 at $78 and $71.89 per barrel respectively.

EZTax.in, Top Income, GST Tax Filing Portal announced today that they have released India’s 1st AY2018-19 Tax Optimizer Software part of their Tax Filing Offerings to save on Taxes. Per EZTax.in CEO, Mr. Suneel Dasari, “We are providing Tax Optimization Report bundled thru every Income Tax Filing, to add the Value to our Tax Payer”. He continued to say “While it varies based on individual tax payer’s income, it has estimated based on their research, that an average Salaried employee could save Rs. 28,000 with proper Tax Planning”. Company expected enhanced growth this tax season due to the recognition of their “EZTax.in GST Accounting” software product coined as the best GST product in India”

Further, after much waiting, Income Tax Department today released ITR-4 Questionnaire, which is to be used for any tax payer whose income is from Business and Profession for a turnover up to 2 Cr. This is in addition to earlier release of ITR-1 for Salaried Tax payer, a month ago.

For Small and medium businesses (SME), whose books are not maintained regularly, EZTax.in recommends to file under Presumptive Income Tax filing. It is also expected that Income Tax Department would encourage this in coming years.

For AY 2018-19, ITR-4 requires the businesses to quote GSTIN Number, along with few entries from Balance Sheet. New fields required such as Sundry debtors, Sundry Creditors, Inventories, Cash-in-hand, along with other optional fields such as Loans, Advances. The idea behind the new requirement is to control the bleeding Tax Revenue for both center and state governments due to non-filing or non-timely filing of GST Returns.

Telecom giants Reliance Jio and Bharti Airtel on Friday announced that they have begun selling Apple Watch Series 3 (GPS + Cellular) which adds built-in cellular to the wearable.

Jio also announced a “JioEverywhereConnect” service for all its prepaid and postpaid customers at no additional cost that would allow users to use the same Jio number on both their iPhone and Apple Watch Series 3 (GPS + Cellular), to make and receive calls, use data and applications on the data-strong Jio network.

“The true potential of an advanced cellular technology powering Apple Watch Series 3 can be unleashed only on an advanced full-4G network like Jio. Jio is the only network with pan-India 4G-data and voice services (VoLTE) that provides an unmatched experience,” a Jio spokesperson said in a statement.

Meanwhile, Airtel customers on “MyPlan Postpaid” or “Infinity Postpaid” plans would be able to enjoy cellular services on Apple Watch Series 3 (GPS + Cellular) for free.

“We are happy to work with Apple to help our customers enjoy the Apple Watch Series 3 on India’s best smartphone network,” added Vani Venkatesh, Chief Marketing Officer at Bharti Airtel.

Apple Watch Series 3 has built-in cellular function that lets users allow to stay connected, make calls, receive texts and more, even without iPhone nearby.

The wearable has health and fitness modes with intelligent coaching features and 50-meter water resistance.