Union finance minister Pranab Mukherjee on Sun-day assured India Inc there was no “vindictive agenda” behind the proposal to amend the Income-Tax Act with retrospective effect from 1962, and said the

Finance minister Pranab Mukherjee shied away from announcing any major reforms in the Union Budget on Friday and focused more on fiscal consolidation. To control fiscal deficit, he raised excise and service tax rates to raise `45,940 crore and brought more services into the tax net while providing token relief on the personal income-tax front.

Sounding an optimistic note, the Economic Survey 2011-12 said weakness in Indian economic activity has bottomed out and “a gradual upswing is imminent”. It admitted, though, that deceleration in 2011-12 was a “wake-up call”, and the country’s ability to deal with the current slowdown after 2008-09 was “weak”.

There’s bad news for employees: the government has decided to cut interest rate on Employees Provident Fund from 9.50 per cent to 8.25 per cent in 2011-12. The 1.25 per cent cut in the interest rate is the single largest rate cut in over a decade.

The Economic Survey 2011-12 said that the main reason for the recovery to be initially slow was slight decline in the investment rates with gross capital formation as a ratio of the GDP in the period between October to December being 30 per cent as compared to 32.3 per cent a year ago.

In an effort to make railways more safe and secure, railway minister Dinesh Trivedi has proposed setting up of an independent railway safety authority, which will be a statutory regulatory body.

One of the thrust of the railway budget presented on Wednesday has been to increase safety of passengers. Railway minister Dinesh Trivedi proposed setting up of an independent Railway Safety Authority

In a bad new for the employees, government has decided to cut interest rate on Employees' Provident Fund (EPF) from 9.50 per cent to 8.25 per cent in 2011-12.

The 1.25 per cent cut in the interest r

Industrial production in India accelerated the fastest in seven months in January, growing by 6.8 per cent due to a surge in non-consumer durables like food products and beverages. Capital and intermediate goods, however, were still in the red for the fifth consecutive month, contracting by 1.5 per cent and 3.2 per cent respectively.

The parliamentary standing committee on finance, which submitted its report on the Direct Tax Code Bill to Lok Sabha Speaker Meira Kumar Friday, has recommended hiking the tax exemption limit to Rs 3 lakhs from the current Rs 1.8 lakh (for men, Rs 1.9 lakh for women) and raising tax slabs.