Tuesday, March 22, 2011
urbanisation to be actively facilitated & comprehensive capacity-building programme for urban governance.
A fare for the poor
Monday, March 21, 2011
What Does Nano Want
Thursday, March 17, 2011
No case for delaying Companies Bill
Laws of work say that 90 per cent of a project takes 10 per cent of the time. The remaining 10 per cent takes 90 per cent of the timeIn the case of the Companies Bill — drafted in 2009, the remaining 10 per cent is taking forever.
It is reported that the Bill, conceived to cleanse and condense a complicated Companies Act, 1956, may not be tabled before Parliament this session. This is ironical considering the fact that close on the heels of announcing 35 Converged Indian Accounting Standards, a new Schedule VI has been drafted.
Revised Schedule VI
For a corporate entity, Schedule VI is the equivalent of the Accounting Constitution. Initial reports suggested that the revised Schedule would apply to all entities, but a detailed look at the Schedule seems to suggest that it could only apply to entities that need to follow the Converged Indian Accounting Standards.
This could immediately spring a question whether one could have two Schedules under the same Act. When one can have multiple accounting standards, why not two Schedules? The stand-out feature in the Revised Schedule is the requirement to segregate both assets and liabilities into Current and Non-Current- a requirement that IFRS swears by.
Business Line : OTHERS / ACCOUNTANCY : No case for delaying Companies Bill
The Garden of Your Mind
If you think of your mind as a garden, what have you planted? You know what's planted there by what's growing!
IFRS: More time will benefit all
The implementation of Ind-AS is also subject to successful enactment of the Companies Amendment Bill, as numerous sections such as 391, 394, 100, 78, Schedule VI and Schedule XIV conflict with the requirements of IFRS.
The tax situation is equally compelling. Typically IFRS accounts are meant for investors. Taxation has a different purpose and hence will have a different perspective compared to an investor. For example, an investor in an investment property company would evaluate the company based on the fair value of the investment properties. Tax, on the other hand, will focus more on rental income and realised profits on sale of the investment properties. Given that the objective of investors and tax authorities will remain different, it is an inevitable consequence that two sets of standards would be required. Taxation authorities cannot indefinitely continue to fill the gap by using court rulings as that would make the entire environment uncertain and litigious.
Business Line : OTHERS / ACCOUNTANCY : IFRS: More time will benefit all
Tuesday, March 15, 2011
After 2G, it could be coal
Business Line : Today's Paper / OPINION : After 2G, it could be coal
Monday, March 14, 2011
When hard economic realities drive choice
Wednesday, March 2, 2011
Private firms corner AP coast, little left for Centre
The matter came to the fore two months ago when a meeting was convened by the Union shipping secretary to consider a proposal for establishing an integrated port-cum-shipbuilding centre on the coast of AP jointly by the Visakhapatnam Port Trust (VPT), Shipping Corporation of India and Cochin Shipyard along with equity from the GoI.
Though the representative of the AP government - the principal secretary (infrastructure and investments) breezily told the meeting that finding land - 5,000 acres - would not be a problem, the chairman of VPT pointed out that the private players responsible for operating the ports of Krishnapatnam and Machilipatnam had been given exclusive rights for operations on a huge tract on the coast of south Andhra Pradesh. On this, the representative of the state government offered Nakkapalli for location of the proposed venture. However, the Union secretary himself pointed that this place was in Visakhapatnam district and therefore concentration of ports in the same area would be a matter of concern.
Both the Visakhapatnam and Gangavaram ports are located here. After the meeting the shipping ministry collated data and found that a staggering 348 kms of waterfront had been given to the Krishnapatnam, Machilipatnam and VANPIC ports in the last few years.
A confidential note prepared by the ministry noted that the waterfront had been allotted not only for port development but also under the 'garb of port exclusive zone'. The note pointed out that after allocation the entire stretch had been cornered by one single group . "It is inconceivable that one such group has the requisite financial and technical resources to exploit such a vast stretch of waterfront on their own...the obvious conclusion is that individuals and business houses have aggressively cornered the waterfront with the objective of leveraging a scarce national resource for trading and achieving windfall projects. Perhaps a similar trend is also taking place in other coastal states such as Gujarat, Odisha and Tamil Nadu which would be required to be verified", the note added.
Even as one-third of the coastline of AP has been given away to private parties, older ports in the east coast of the country have hardly any land. Visakhapatnam port holds 15.3 km of waterfront. Chennai 10.6 km, Paradip 25.8 km and Tuticorin 19.75 km. Even the new private sector Gangavaram port has barely 39 km of coastline under its control. However, there was no illegality in the state government allocating such a huge portion of the national waterfront to these ports. The subject is under the concurrent list meaning that both the state and central governments have powers to allocate the waterfront.
The note says that the draft Indian Ports Act which seeks to provide a new legislative framework does provide a consultative process for the purpose of allocating the national waterfront, but apprehends that by the time this
legislation is enacted the entire waterfront along the coast would have been allocated to private
parties.
But analysts like Lok Satta president Jayaprakash Narayan think that the whole matter smacks of a huge scam that needs to be unravelled in all its dimension.
"This is much bigger than the 2G scam. It is the same coastline where the defence ministry had to shell out Rs 1000 crore for the expansion of Vizag naval base. We have to go to the bottom of