Daily Financial News Analysis – 24th August’20

Table of Contents

Vande Bharat Train

44 semi-high speed Vande Bharat train set tender was cancelled.
New tender will include provision for local component of more than 50%.
Railway board chairman Vinod Kumar Yadav: some of the bidders had disclosed some details of financial offers while submitting technical bids.
Once a tender is floated, technical bids are opened and evaluated, after which financial bids of only those bidders are opened who qualify in the technical bids.
Fresh tender will be floated within a week as per Revised Public Procurement (preference to Make in India) order.
Vande Bharat trains are indigenous electric multiple units manufactured by the Chennai-based integral coach factory (ICF).

The National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) has developed a mobile app, ‘Harit Path‘.
Aim: to facilitate creation of Green Highways across the country.
The App will also be used to monitor location, growth, species details, maintenance activities, targets and achievements of each of the PSU’s field units for every plant under the Highway plantation projects.
NHAI had also recently undertaken a nation-wide plantation drive, Harit Bharat Sankalp, under which it planted over 25 lakh plants in 25 days along the stretches of the National Highways across the country.
Highway contractors have been made accountable for proper upkeep and maintenance of the plantations.
Under a unique initiative, the payment to the contractors for the plantation work has been linked with the growth of the plants.

Government has activated Aadhaar authentication for new goods and services tax (GST) registration to enhance ease of doing business.
For those opting for Aadhaar authentication, new GST registration will be issued within three working days and will not need to wait for physical verification.
However, those not opting for Aadhaar authentication will be granted it only after physical verification of the place of business or documentary verification which may take up to 21 working days or more.
The facility of quick approval of GST registration through Aadhaar authentication can be availed by all Indian citizens.

Top private banks are reportedly passing on to consumers the losses incurred by the removal by fiat of the merchant discount rate (MDR).
Neither consumers nor the banks alone must be forced to bear the cost of electronic payments.
The government, the RBI and the banks should together foot the bill and spare the consumer.
Around 3 million merchants accept digital payments by having a point of sale machine.
Nearly 10 million accept digital payments by means of the QR code for the Unified Payment Interface.
The annual cost for banks and fin-techs to maintain this infrastructure is estimated at around ₹5,000 crore.
The cost has to come out of MDR.
For the government, the potential tax base will grow as digital payments bring in more transparency.
The RBI will save on the cost of printing and moving cash.
Cash-handling risks and costs for banks that need to stock their ATMs and employ people to guard them will also come down.

GK Pillai, former commerce and home secretary, who now heads a panel to fix the refund rates.
The outlay for a key scheme, under which exporters will be reimbursed for all embedded taxes paid on inputs consumed in outbound shipments, could be “much higher” than the Niti Aayog’s much-curtailed estimate of Rs 10,000 crore a year
Although Pillai refrained from offering a precise estimate of the allocation under the Remission of Duties and Taxes on Exported Products (RoDTEP) scheme.
All the imposts that are not subsumed by the goods and services tax (GST) will be built into the RoDTEP rates, in a potential relief for exporters battered by the pandemic.
The government had envisaged an annual allocation of about Rs 50,000 crore under the RoDTEP scheme to make exports zero-rated.
The levies that will be considered while fixing the RoDTEP rates include state VAT/ central excise duty on fuel used in transportation, captive power and farming; mandi tax; electricity duty; stamp duty on export documents and purchases from unregistered dealers; embedded central GST and compensation cess; tax paid on transportation; cesses and royalties in case of minerals like coal and iron ore.