Jun 14
By
tushar.rahane
Please find the detail break-up of the Final price of petrol available in pumps.
This is a break up considering crude oil at 130 $ per barrel. Following details are for per liter petrol in Rs.
Basic Price = Rs 21.93
Excise duty = Rs 14.35
Education Tax = Rs 0.43
Dealer commission = Rs 1.05
VAT = Rs 5.5
Crude Oil Custom duty = Rs 1.1
Petrol Custom = Rs 1.54
Transportation Charge = Rs 6.00
Total price = Rs 51.90
So for a Rs 22 liter petrol at pumps we people pay Rs 28 tax extra.
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Jun 07
When he became the Prime Minister, Dr. Manmohan Singh was supposed to be a smart economist, and a non-practising politician; now it seems that things are totally reversed. For a long time, the Prime Minister kept off raising the price of fuel even though the international price of oil had gone up tremendously, this was a political decision. At the same time, since the Government has committed vast sums of money to its social welfare schemes, it cannot afford to significantly reduce the duties on oil; hence it refused to accept the Left dictated measure to reduce duty to absorb the price hike.
Now that the Government was finally forced to increase the price of petrol, diesel and LPG, there has been a whole gamut of measures to try and reduce the political cost. So the Prime Minister comes on TV to declare his helplessness at this hike, this being a global increase in fuel. In addition, the Prime Minister and the Congress tried to push some of the cost onto local State Governments by asking the state Governments to reduce duties from their side (and promptly, some state Governments ruled by the Congress did so).
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Jun 07
It seems to be a story that keeps on repeating itself over and over; you hear of people being harassed by loan recovery agents for repayment of loans, or of somebody’s vehicle being taken away from them anywhere where the vehicle can be found, and so on. In extreme cases, the pressure or violence of the recovery agents can lead to injury or death of the person having taken the loan. The financing company or bank having advanced the loan would take recourse to goons or musclemen and they would use or threaten force in this regard.
For the last 2-3 years, this practise has been challenged in court, and there have been a number of decisions in this regard. Here’s another substantiating the same point that a loan recovery company cannot use force for loan recovery. Since a loan agreement is a civil contract, recovery of loan amount or the assets bought against the loan also can happen only when there is a court order:
Unless a bank or a financial institution is equipped with a court order to repossess a vehicle which it has given on loan, it has no authority to go to the residence of the borrower to take away the vehicle by force. This was observed by the state consumer commission in a recent order.
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May 21
In the 80’s and 90’s, a lot of films had the concept of a secret Swiss account held by a politician or a corrupt government official, and the mission always was to either get the corrupt minister in some way or to get details of the secret account. Typically, Swiss banks (as well as banks in many other regions that are known as tax havens and where ill-gotten wealth is hidden) will not reveal data until it can be conclusively proved that there is something illegal involved in all this.
Another haven where such a banking setup exists is the small country of Liechtenstein, a small landlocked country between Austria and Switzerland. It also has a banking setup which is seen as a haven for people seeking to store their money, and hence a target for people wanting to investigate corruption. Now imagine, that the Indian Government can freely obtain such information about bank records; won’t any Government jump at the chance to obtain such information and unmask people who have salted away their money.
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May 16
India’s legal system can work very slowly, what with the massive backlog of cases that it has. Due to this backlog and the time it could take to get a case heard, people resort to their own form of justice or get frustrated waiting for a resolution to the cases. In the case of a bank that has given a loan to a person and the person is delinquent about repaying the loan, the proper procedure is to institute a complaint and follows the proper legal procedure for recovering the loan. This would take a lot of time, and hence banks use the services of goons, loan recovery agents who use force, etc.
This is the position taken by banks when trying to do a half-hearted justification of their willingness to use illegal means to recover their loans, or to get their money back by seizing the asset for which the loan was taken. However, this approach has several problems.
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May 06
We have come to regard bank drop boxes as a great extension of the branch; dropping checks, payment, check book requirements, and similar requests into these drop boxes. For credit card payments, where the required date is very close or even today, it seems like we can just drop the check in the drop box the same day and avoid a late payment. So, it will surprise people to know that this is nowhere near being a fool-proof instrument, and is subject to many delays and lack of responsibility by the bank. Refer this article:
A Mumbai resident recently dropped his credit card payment cheque in a box placed at a travel company. Although he dropped it four days before the due date, the amount was not debited from his account. Despite registering a complaint with the bank’s customer care helpline, his card was deactivated. To top it, he has been asked to pay a late fee and finance charges.
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Oct 31
By now, there are numerous cases where banks have indulged in force when trying to recover loans. In many cases, these measures have resulted in humiliation, injuries, hospitalization and sometimes even death of the person being hounded; banks typically claim that they are not responsible for the actions of these recovery agents. The RBI has been mostly quiet when all this has been going on; one would have expected the IBA (Indian Banking Association) to be quiet, but the RBI is the authority that has controlling authorities over all the banks in India, and one would have expected them to intervene. It is courts that have been taking the lead in acting against these recovery agents.
Now finally the RBI seems to have woken up. It says that it will issue a circular on November 15, that will impose a directive to banks to make sure that their recovery agents do not indulge in these kind of activities:
MUMBAI: Concerned over growing litigations against banks and high-handedness of recovery agents, Reserve Bank on Tuesday issued strong warning to banks to check such practices or be barred from engaging such services.
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Oct 20
A number of investors in India are invested into Mutual Funds, sold on the promise of being able to get better returns from the equity market without having to worry about direct investment into the equity market. A number of these investors do not have adequate information about the working of the Mutual Fund industry and depend on the Mutual Fund to keep their best interests in mind; something that unfortunately does not happen as much as you would like. For example, a number of Mutual Funds are pushed through investing agents, and since the commission to these agents is much higher for a New Fund Offer, they try and get new investors to put money into these New Fund Offers. SEBI has a FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) section on their website that deals with Mutual Funds. You can access this site here. Some relevant information from this website:
1. When will the investor get certificate or statement of account after investing in a mutual fund?
Mutual funds are required to despatch certificates or statements of accounts within six weeks from the date of closure of the initial subscription of the scheme. In case of close-ended schemes, the investors would get either a demat account statement or unit certificates as these are traded in the stock exchanges. In case of open-ended schemes, a statement of account is issued by the mutual fund within 30 days from the date of closure of initial public offer of the scheme. The procedure of repurchase is mentioned in the offer document.
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