Business

When dal prices kept rising through the early summer of 2015, those were initially seen as a natural fallout of adverse weather conditions. But once the monsoons subsided, the prices went through the roof, throwing life out of gear. That’s when dal prices hit the headlines in newspapers and dominated discussion on prime time news. The Union government swung into action—first by cracking down on hoarders and announcing that it would import more pulses, and then by increasing the minimum support...

The Goods and Services Tax (GST) is at long last all set to be rolled out from July 1, 2017. What was once much-awaited will now be a financial reality, and GST will be the way forward. There is almost near-unanimity among various sectors of the Indian textiles and apparel industry that GST will be beneficial in the long run, though there are differences of opinion and uncertainty over finer points. The textiles and apparel industry had to wait for close to two weeks after the GST Council on May...

Fibre2Fashion (F2F): At which stages of the value chain, will the Goods and Services Tax (GST) have an impact on the retail sector? Which of these would be the most crucial? Rohan Sharma (RS): The GST envisages the taxation based on the destination principle, which means tax will be payable at the place of supply and consumption end of the retail chain is where the tax credit will stick. What is essential to note is that the cascading tax input at the input goods and services level shall be...

On the face of it, the news about the Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) signing a pact to buy a stake in the Gujarat State Petroleum Corporation (GSPC) may seem to be that of a routine merger-buyout deal. Only, that it’s not business as usual. In fact, it is a classic case of a cash-rich Maharatna enterprise being made to subsidise the financial misadventures of a company that is steeped in debt. Suspicion that ONGC would have to bail out GSPC surfaced during the Budget session of...

The protests over Cauvery waters in Karnataka, particularly in capital Bengaluru, have made headlines the country over. But lost in the din has been a string of demonstrations of a much smaller scale in the city: over tree-felling for widening roads under the controversial TenderSURE project. Both, however, have shown the disconnect the city’s corporate elite have with popular sentiments and ground realities. Having been caught on the wrong foot over both protests, the elite is now making...

The excitement over Thursday's Jio launch may sooner or later fade away, but the Shah Committee's indictment of Reliance Industries Limited (RIL) will ensure that the company remains in a spot. The one-member panel of former Delhi High Court chief justice Ajit Prakash Shah on Wednesday held RIL and its foreign partners BP Plc and Niko Resources guilty of taking out natural gas that belonged to the Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) in an offshore block in the Bay of Bengal. Worse for the...

The KG gas controversy now has some numbers to go by—the Comptroller and Auditor-General (CAG) of India has pegged "excess cost recovery" at $1,547.85 million (Rs 9307.22 crore). The numbers have been mentioned in a chapter of the CAG report that looked at Union government (civil) compliance issues for the financial year ending March 2015. This chapter pertained to the ministry of petroleum and natural gas; the report was released on Tuesday August 2. The statements made in the report, albeit...

It's a big industry by any measure—one that not only generates huge revenues for the country's economy, but also offers equally immense employment potential. The British fashion industry had revenues of £28 billion in 2015, and employed about 880,000 people—right from manufacturing to retail. It's one of the sectors that is going to more than feel the pinch with the June 23 referendum calling for the exit of the United Kingdom from the 28-country European Union (EU). On a scale of severity, the...

The Karnataka High Court's interim order of March 24, 2016 saying that the Union government cannot regulate the licence fee for seed technology might have come as a relief to Mahyco Monsanto Biotech Limited (MMBL), but the issues at hand are far from dead. In fact, there are many who believe that this is probably only the first battle in a long-drawn war that would be fought among many stakeholders. The order was essentially over a technical count since the licence fee was based on mutual...

When research is narrowed down to specifics, they often narrate an interesting story. So it was with a recent study that looked at the current status of denim imports into the European Union (EU). The findings are clear: it is Bangladesh that emerges as the front-runner, though it does not yet have a stranglehold over the European market; and India is nowhere to be seen among the top exporters. And China, like everywhere else, has been on a steady decline. The findings of the said study 'Les...