Page 15 - BANKING FINANCE APRIL 2017

ROUNDUP

Withdrawal of gratuity amount doubled Farmers are paying

The central government has decided to permit millions of organised sector em- through digital platforms
ployees to withdraw up to Rs 20 lakh from
Demonetisation has pushed many
their gratuity corpus, double the amount
farmers to
permitted now. Currently, even if a worker opt for
accumulates more than Rs 10 lakh as gratu- v a r i o u s
ity contribution, he or she is allowed to with- d i g i t a l
draw only Rs 10 lakh. The agreement came platforms.
following a meeting between the labour ministry and representatives from states, Platforms
employees and employers. like TheAgrihub, AgroStar, BigHaat,
"All the stakeholders-states, Centre, unions and the industry representatives were and RML AgTech provide services
on the same page to enhance the gratuity ceiling from Rs 10 lakh to Rs 20 lakh," and products to farmers where
a labour ministry spokesperson said. This follows the 7th Pay Commission report there's been a significant increase in
payments done through debit cards,
allowing government employees to withdraw up to Rs 20 lakh gratuity, which
left out a significantly bigger number of private sector employees. The labour credit cards, netbanking and other
ministry will now bring a formal amendment to the Payment of Gratuity Act to digital modes.
implement the change. BigHaat, an e-commerce platform
that sells agricultural products, includ-
In Mini Rail Budget, Prabhu lays track for freight tar- ing seeds and fertilisers, has seen its
online payment transactions grow
iff policy from 5% of overall transactions six
In the Mini Rail Budget the Ministry of Railways said that it is planning to pro- months ago, to 30%. Over 5,000 farm-
mote private investment through the bidding of ers, mainly in Punjab, Maharashtra,
specific projects and forming of joint ventures with Chhattisgarh, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu
public sector undertakings. In the budget, the rail- and Andhra Pradesh transact on it.
ways also announced turning 25 stations into 100
per cent digital stations. Indirect tax grows 22.2%,
direct grows by 10.7%
The Indian Railways Freight and Passenger Business
Action Plan 2017-18 includes initiatives in the passenger, freight and non-fare The government's revenue collection
revenue segments. It has lined up a new long-term contract for major freight from indirect tax during April-Febru-
customers, which will provide assured cargo for the national carrier and also ary grew by a remarkable 22.2 per
dedicated rakes for customers. cent while that of direct tax rose by
10.7 per cent. Total direct and indi-
To avail of this contract, customers should offer to despatch at least one million rect tax collections at February-end
tonnes per annum, and incremental volumes and customer-based freight rev- stood at Rs 13.89 lakh crore, 81.5 per
enue will get discounts ranging from 1.5 to 35 per cent. cent of the target of Rs 16.99 lakh

Wind power crashes to Rs 3.46 kWhr in the first ever crore, as per the revised estimate for
2016-17.
auction The total direct tax read Rs 6.17 lakh

Wind power prices have crashed to Rs. 3.46 a kWhr in the country's first ever crore and indirect tax mop-up was Rs
auction of wind capacity. The least wind tariff today is Rs. 4.16 in Tamil Nadu. 7.72 lakh crore, led by robust collec-
This fall in wind tariffs mirrors a similar trend in solar tariffs witnessed earlier, tions in personal income tax and ex-
when the prices fell to an unprecedented Rs. 3.29, averaged over 25 years. cise duty, respectively.
Four companies, Mytrah Energy, Green Infra, Inox and Ostro Energy, have won The gross collection of corporate in-
rights to set up 250-MW wind projects each and sell energy to Power Trading come tax (CIT) grew at 11.9 per cent
Corporation, at a price of Rs. 3.46 a kWhr. It is understood that Mytrah and while under personal income tax
Green Infra would set up their projects in Tamil Nadu; the other two will go to (PIT); it was 20.8 per cent over the
Gujarat. The winning companies have to complete their projects in 18 months. same period last fiscal.

BANKING FINANCE | APRIL | 2017 | 15

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