Agricultural Ministry proposes amendment to NCDC Act to include FPOs

Currently, the National Cooperative Development Corporation (NCDC) provides financial assistance to cooperatives including those from weaker sections, for infrastructure and business development among others.

"We have suggested a small amendment to the Act to incorporate FPOs for extending loans and subsidies," a senior Agriculture Ministry official said.

The government is encouraging setting up of FPOs in a big way and trying to provide credit facilities through various schemes so that FPOs become viable, the official added.

FPOs, which are registered under the Companies Act, are firms consisting of small and marginal farmers. There are total 300 FPOs in India supported by government body Small Farmers Agribusiness Consortium (SFAC).

NCDC, a statutory body, had in 2013-14 fiscal released Rs 5,268 crore, against the sanctioned amount of Rs 7,755 crore for the same period.

Maximum funds were released to cooperatives working in Chattisgarh, Maharashtra, Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Uttar Pradesh, an official data showed.

Financial assistance is being given for production, processing, marketing, storage, export and import of
agricultural produce and other notified commodities.

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Black money case: Centre submits list of 627 foreign account holders to Supreme Court

The list was submitted before the Supreme Court by Attorney General Mukul Rohatgi. The development came a day after the apex court directed the Centre to furnish the names of all individuals and entities in its possession who have accounts in overseas banks.

However, the Supreme Court refused to open the sealed envelope saying that the documents should be placed before SIT.

The Supreme Court said, 'Only SIT chairman and vice chairman can open the sealed envelope containing names of account holders.

The Supreme Court asked the SIT to submit status report of its probe by the end of November. SIT will decide what further action is to be taken on black money issue, added the Supreme Court.

Earlier on Tuesday The Supreme Court pulled up the government for seeking a modification of its order on disclosure of names of black money holders abroad. It directed the Centre to place before it names of all such account holders by Wednesday.

Jaitley said the government was keen to punish all illicit foreign account holders and would do everything to bring back the black money.

The truth about these names and also these accounts must come out so that penal action can be taken against the people and  the money lying there can be brought back to India.

"The government has no difficulty whatsoever with any agency investigating this matter because there is nobody the government wants to protect in this case so that those whose names have come must really be investigated and punished according to law," he said.

He, however did not reply to a question on whether the government would make the list public.

Jaitley said the government is also keen that the procedure followed must be such that the reciprocating countries continue to cooperate with India.

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President Pranab Mukherjee to hold conference of NIT chiefs today

The agenda of the conference includes steps required for deepening research and technological innovation for meeting national development goals; technology enabled learning; building international networks and linkages for quality improvement and initiatives for capacity development of faculty, a press release issued today by Rashtrapati Bhavan said.

An action taken report on the recommendations made in the last year's conference was also discussed during the meet, it said.

This is the second conference of Directors of NITs during the present presidency. The first conference was organised in November last year. The Directors of 30 NITs will participate in this year's conference.

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Sensex recovers 81 points in morning trade

The 30-share barometer, which had lost 98.15 points in the previous session, recovered 81.43 points, or 0.30 percent, to 26,834.33 with the sectoral indices led by capital goods, banking, healthcare and realty were trading in positive zone with gains up to 0.52 percent.

Also, the National Stock Exchange index Nifty, regained the 8,000-mark by rising 20.60 points, or 0.26 per cent, to 8,012.30.

Brokers said sentiments turned better as funds and retail investors made fresh buying, tracking a mixed trend on other Asian markets ahead of US Federal Reserve's monetary policy meet.

Besides, expectations of encouraging earnings from more companies also supported the recovery, they said.

Among other Asian markets, Hong Kong's Hang Seng rose 0.20 percent, while Japan's Nikkei was trading 0.17 percent down in morning trade.

US Dow Jones Industrial Average ended 0.07 percent up in Tuesday's trade.

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Tatas leave Singur behind, assure Mamata of project expansion

Asked about the 'bitter experience' of shifting of the Tata Nano car plant from Singur in 2008, Rana Sinha, one of the executives, said, "Forget the issue of the past and target the future."

In September 2008 during the previous Left Front regime, the Tatas left Singur in West Bengal and set up Tata Nano car plant at Sanand in Gujarat following an agitation by the then opposition Trinamool Congress' leader Mamata Banerjee over 'forceful' acquisition of land in the area. A case regarding this is now pending in the Supreme Court.

Singur issue was not in the agenda of the meeting, Tata Steel Processing and Distribution Ltd MD Sandipan Chakraborty said.

Chakraborty said Banerjee asked them if they were facing any problem and how the state government could assist them to overcome them.

"Such an interaction with the CM is unprecedented. The meeting was positive, optimistic and fruitful," Chakraborty, former MD of Tata Ryerson, said.

After the 90-minute long meeting, state Finance and Industry Minister Amit Mitra told reporters that Tata Group was keen on expanding many of their existing projects in the state creating more employment opportunities.

Five companies of the Tata Group have told the chief minister about their plan to invest and expand in existing projects, said Mitra who was also present at the meeting.

The Tata Group have offered employment to nearly 30,000 people in the state under various projects and they would offer more employment in near future, Mitra added.

Tatas were represented in the meeting by executives of Tata Hitachi Construction Machinery, Tata Metaliks, metaljunction and TM International Logistics (TMILL).

Though no Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) executive was present at the meeting, Mitra said TCS CEO and MD N Chandrasekaran wrote to him about its expansion plan.

Under TCS' new project at the 40 acres of land given at Rajarhat New Town, the company would create an employment opportunity for 20,000 people, Mitra said.

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Softbank Group to invest USD 627 million in Snapdeal

This is the largest investment made by a single investor in an e-commerce company in India. Other existing investors have also participated in this round of investment but the company declined to disclose the amount.

Snapdeal will use the investments in expanding its chain of fulfilment centres and make acquisitions in the coming few months specifically in the area of mobile technology.

With mobile commerce fast gaining pace in the country, the city-based firm also plans to set up an incubation centre to hone and harness start-up businesses in the mobile technology space within next 6 months.

Through this strategic investment and partnership with Snapdeal, the SoftBank Group aims to further strengthen its presence in India and leverage synergies with its network of Internet companies around the world, Snapdeal said in a statement.

Snapdeal has raised close to USD 1 billion during this calendar year. Founded in 2010, Snapdeal has more than 25 million registered users and more than 50,000 business sellers.

"We believe India is at a turning point in its development and have confidence that India will grow strongly over the next decade. As part of this belief, we intend to deploy significant capital in India over the next few years to support development of the market," SoftBank Corp Chairman and CEO Masayoshi Son said.

SoftBank has pledged an investment of USD 10 billion (over Rs 60,000 crore) in India's IT and communications space, one of the biggest investment commitments from a Japanese firm after Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit to that country.

"India has the third-largest Internet user base in the world, but a relatively small online market currently. This situation means India has, with better, faster and cheaper Internet access, a big growth potential," SoftBank Corp Vice Chairman and CEO of SIMI Nikesh Arora said.

Arora will join the board of Snapdeal as part of the strategic investment.

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Switzerland acts iffy about India making Swiss bank a/c information public

However, the Swiss Foreign Ministry official hoped that with the advent of the new government in India, which has made taking action against black money a priority, the differences would be resolved much quickly.

Valentin Zellweger, Director and Legal Adviser, Swiss Department of Foreign Affairs, at the same time asserted that there is no banking secrecy in case of illegal acts.

"There's no banking secrecy if we talk about illegal acts. So if we get a request from a prosecutor in another country, there's no banking secrecy. We have very stringent know your customer rules. So we are quick in being able to give the information," he said.

Responding to a question on the first list of names, allegedly having accounts in Swiss banks on unaccounted wealth, Zellweger said the talks with the Indian Government so far has been on tax evasion and not any other illegal acts.

"We have had long discussions with the Indian government. But that is for tax evasion. Tax evasion used not to be a criminal offense under Swiss law. That is changing. We are now adapting to international standards," he told a Washington audience, acknowledging that this is a issue of dispute.

"That is at the heart of the dispute. There is a disagreement with the Indian government and as to what exactly will have to be disclosed. There is a new Indian government. We now hope that we will be able to resolve the case much quicker than we could do so in the past," he said.

Appearing at a panel discussion on Returning Stolen Assets organized by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington-based think tank, Zellweger said this is now very much on the forefront of international news and argued that in recent years Swiss authorities have been very co-operative in repatriation of the unaccounted money.

"You take Tunisia, for example. You had a restitution of USD 27 million by Lebanon to Tunisia, what is it now, 2011 within three and a half years. The Swiss prosecutor general has decided to send back two-thirds of the funds we have frozen in Switzerland to Tunisia," he said.

"We never had that in the past. The quickest case we had so far was Abacha, and that took us five years. We were efficient because we had an excellent cooperation with Nigeria in that case. Now, in Tunisia, we solved the case within three years," he said.

"So I am pretty confident for two reasons. First, asset recovery is now a topic on the international agenda. And second, international cooperation has hugely increased over the past two years," he said.

In the run-up to Parliamentary polls, BJP had promised to bring back black money kept by Indians in overseas banks while targeting the UPA government for not taking effective action on the issue.

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