06th Mar : Today's Important NEWS !!!!!!!!

1)AAP apologises for cadre retaliation against BJP

Even as the Aam Aadmi Party slammed the BJP for “violent attacks” on its workers, who were protesting against the detention of party chief Arvind Kejriwal in Gujarat on Wednesday, the party apologised for the action of its “angry” workers who were “provoked into retaliating.”Addressing a late night press conference here, AAP leader Prashant Bhushan appealed to the party workers not to resort to violence no matter what the provocation. “There is no place for violence in our party. Our movement has been non-violent and that is how we intend to keep it,” he said.The party also appealed to the Election Commission and the administration to ensure that there was no violence. Among those who were injured or manhandled in Delhi were JNU’s Anand Kumar and Rajmohan Gandhi.“The detention of Arvind Kejriwal and the smashing of his car, violence unleashed on our party workers in different cities reveal the true face of the BJP. This is shameful for our democracy and our apprehension is that we are entering into a fascist phase. It only goes on to show how scared the BJP is with the rise of the AAP,” he said.Responding to the BJP’s assertion that the AAP should have taken permission for demonstrating outside its headquarters, Mr. Bhushan said to protest in a non-violent manner was not only a fundamental right, but also the responsibility of every citizen.

2)Women’s day gift: SBH offers 9.55 per cent interest

Public sector entity State Bank of Hyderabad has come out with a special offer on 400 days fixed deposit scheme with 9.25 per cent interest on the occasion of International Women’s Day.

3)Obama’s budget offers an election blueprint

Seeks to energise Democratic voters with populist proposals, unlikely to pass congressional muster

U.S. President Barack Obama holds a schoolboy on his lap as he sits with children during a tour of a Pre-K classroom at Powell Elementary School prior to speaking on the Fiscal Year 2015 budget in Washington, DC, on Tuesday.— PHOTO: AFP

President Barack Obama sent Congress a $3.9 trillion budget request on Tuesday that stands as a platform for Democrats to run on in this election year, full of policies intended to invite contrasts with Republicans rather than offer compromises as he did last year, without success.Obama’s budget for fiscal 2015, which begins October 1, reflects his aspirations in his waning presidency, regardless of the political reality he confronts. The document, his sixth budget, seeks to energise Democratic voters with populist proposals like a more generous tax credit for the working poor, paid for with higher taxes on the rich.The President, as before, seeks to balance calls for spending and tax-cut policies to help the economy against measures to reduce already declining deficits. But this year his emphasis is on the investment side to address the rise in economic inequality, broaden opportunities for upward mobility and spur technological innovation.Mr. Obama has reprised many spending and tax-cut initiatives for education from preschool through college, for roads and other public works, and for research and manufacturing centres, with many of the ideas popular among Republicans. But he has proposed to offset the initiatives’ cost by ending tax breaks for the wealthy and some corporations, which sets up a trade-off intended to put anti-tax Republicans in a political vice. He would bring total new revenues to more than $1 trillion over 10 years, much of it for deficit reduction.“Our budget is about choices, it’s about our values,” Mr. Obama said as he visited an elementary school in Washington. “As a country, we’ve got to make a decision if we’re going to protect tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans or if we’re going to make smart investments necessary to create jobs and grow our economy, and expand opportunity for every American.”Republicans' criticismRepublicans were quick to condemn the Obama budget for its proposed spending and tax increases. They will most likely succeed again in blocking much of it in Congress’s appropriations process, though Democrats are typically able to salvage some initiatives.“This budget isn’t a serious document, it’s a campaign brochure,” said Rep. Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin, who as chairman of the House Budget Committee will write Republicans’ fiscal plan next month.Before the Obama budget’s release, Mr. Ryan put out a blistering analysis of anti-poverty programs of the past half-century, reflecting Republicans’ goal of restructuring the safety net.Congressional Democrats are hoping that Mr. Obama’s budget will frame the election-year debate and sharpen the contrasts between the parties’ views of government, to Democrats’ political advantage.“We’ve got to decide if we’re going to keep squeezing the middle class, or if we’re going to continue to reduce the deficits responsibly while taking steps to grow and strengthen the middle class,” Mr. Obama said at the school. “The American people have made clear time and again which approach they prefer — that’s the approach my budget offers.”Gone from his budget is the concession Mr. Obama proposed to Republicans last year, as his second term began, to reduce future Social Security cost-of-living increases. The President had hoped that gesture, made over Democrats’ objections, would entice Republicans to compromise on a “grand bargain” of long-term deficit reductions and federal investments. But Republicans refused to consider raising tax revenues from the wealthy and some businesses, as Mr. Obama sought.So the President returned this year to what the White House called “a more traditional budget” — one embodying his wish list. Democrats in Congress had all but demanded that he do so, fearful that giving ground on Social Security would anger the liberal base when the party needs high turnout to avoid big losses in November.Leading Democrats indicated, however, that they would join Republicans in opposing Mr. Obama’s plan to spend nearly $55 billion — evenly split between domestic and military spending — beyond limits set for discretionary programs in the deal that the two parties negotiated in December to avert another government shutdown.Mr. Obama proposed to offset the added spending — half with reductions in other programs and half from limiting tax benefits for wealthy individuals in investment accounts for retirement.But Republicans said that he was reneging on the December deal, which softened across-the-board spending cuts known as sequestration that had taken effect months earlier. By the afternoon, Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski, a Democratic liberal from Maryland and the chairwoman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, issued a statement saying that her panel “will adhere to the spending caps in that deal.”Echoing Mr. Obama, however, Ms. Mikulski said she “will continue to fight the irresponsible sequestration funding levels we are facing in future years so we can make needed investments in our people and infrastructure.”Overhauling tax codeWhile the Obama budget projected nearly $4 trillion in spending for 2015, less than a third of that — under $1.2 trillion — would go to so-called discretionary programs, domestic and military, for which the President and Congress directly control spending. The rest is for so-called mandatory spending — mainly for the fast-growing entitlement benefit programs Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security, as well as for interest on the federal debt and benefits for federal retirees and veterans.Mr. Obama again proposed to overhaul the corporate tax code, by ending various business tax breaks and using the savings to reduce the maximum 35 per cent tax rate for corporations. With about $150 billion in additional one-time revenues that businesses would pay in the transition from one tax system to another, Mr. Obama would finance half of a $302 billion, four-year plan for work on highway, bridge, rail and mass transit projects, as he first suggested last summer.One new proposal would expand the earned-income tax credit for low-wage workers, which many Americans claim at some point in their careers, so that it better benefits childless adults and those who do not have custody of their children.The current earned-income tax credit mainly rewards workers with children, but people in both parties support increasing the credit for childless workers to encourage more single young men to join or stay in the labour force.

4)Bad loans, the biggest challenge for public sector banks: FM

To take up UBI issue with RBI Governor on Friday

Worried over a further rise in bad loans, especially among large companies, Finance Minister P. Chidambaram, on Wednesday, exhorted public sector banks to effectively deal with non-performing assets (NPAs), their biggest challenge.Addressing a press conference here after reviewing the performance of public sector banks, the Minister said “The biggest challenge facing the public sector banks is NPAs and asset quality... NPAs are high in large corporate sector as well as in the SSI and MSE sector.”Without providing NPA data of PSU banks for this financial year, Mr. Chidambaram said it was ‘likely to be a little higher’ over 2012-13, when NPAs stood at 3.84 per cent.Stressing the importance of addressing NPAs, the Minister said, “We have told them (banks) to focus on recovery and banks are focusing on recovery.” He said the efforts had yielded some results as PSU banks recovered Rs.18,933 crore of bad loans during the nine months through December, 2013.NPAsBad loans of PSU banks rose by 28.5 per cent to Rs.1.83 lakh crore in March, 2013, over the preceding September.To a query on the bad loans of United Bank of India, he said the issue would be discussed separately with Reserve Bank of India Governor Raghuram Rajan on Friday.Kolkata-based United Bank posted a net loss of Rs.1,238 crore in the three months ended December, 2013, during which its gross NPAs surged to Rs.8,546 crore from Rs.2,964 crore at the end of March last year.Mr. Chidambaram said United Bank had managed to recover Rs.1,200 crore in January and February.To a query on gold import curbs, the Finance Minister said the government would review the customs duty on the metal after the final current account deficit (CAD) numbers for this financial year were out.“We will revisit the import duty on gold only after the CAD figures become clear for the end of the year. Let’s see what the CAD figures are,” he said.

5)The man who nailed Sahara

K. M. Abraham

When the Supreme Court castigated Sahara Parivar chief Subarata Roy, and sent him to judicial custody on Tuesday, one man must have finally permitted himself a smile — K. M. Abraham, former board member of the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) and the man who investigated the Sahara scam.If the case survived the numerous obfuscations, dilatory tactics and twists and turns of the last three years, it was entirely due to Dr. Abraham’s watertight order of June 2011. The 99-page order that he put together under conditions of extreme pressure and stress was scholarly and extremely well-researched at one level even as it brilliantly demolished all the false defences put up by Sahara’s lawyers.Without saying so in so many words, the order highlighted that the two companies — Sahara India Real Estate Corporation (SIREC) and Sahara Housing and Investment Corporation (SHIC) — may actually have been laundering money in the names of fictitious investors. The Supreme Court alluded to this in its observations on Tuesday. Sahara questioned SEBI’s power to regulate optionally fully convertible debentures (OFCDs), and also contended that the funds were raised through private placements and, therefore, not under the market regulator’s purview. SEBI’s order pointed out that the definition of ‘securities’ under the Securities Contracts (Regulation) Act is an inclusive one and not exhaustive and that OFCDs would come under its purview.Dr. Abraham’s order also held that an offer made to 50 or more persons ceases to be a private placement under the Companies Act. SIREC alone had about 6.6 million investors in its OFCD scheme. Complete details of these investors were not available with SIREC, and Dr. Abraham’s random test of four addresses of ‘investors’ in Mumbai revealed that only two existed and even these two had nothing to do with the Sahara group. This revelation was important to demolish Sahara’s argument that this was a private placement meant for people associated with the group.Dr. Abraham’s job was not easy because the data provided by SIREC was in the form of scanned images that were not amenable to analysis on a computer. The other company, SHIC, failed to share any information with SEBI. Not surprising then that he commented in his order: “There seems to be an unstated resolve on the part of the two companies not to part with data in any meaningful manner. The thrust seems to be on concealment and obfuscation rather than openness and transparency.”It must have been gratifying for Dr. Abraham, who is now Additional Chief Secretary, Kerala, when the Supreme Court quoted extensively from his order in its judgment of August 2012, ordering Sahara to refund its investors. After all the hard work, the pressures that he had to endure and the controversies, it is now vindication time for him.

6)Banks tap social media to garner new businesses

Disruptive technologies such as SMAC (social, mobile, analytics and cloud) are carving a new path of innovation in banking functions and strategy, according to a CII-PwC survey “Connecting the dots: wiring business, technology and operations, which was released at the CII Banking Technology Summit here on Wednesday.About 63 per cent of banking survey respondents confirms that their bank used social media campaigns quite frequently to get leads. Fifty per cent said they were using social media aggregators to help interpret unstructured data. “This implies that social media has the power to garner new business and attract new customers,” said the survey report.Around 86 per cent said that they had already deployed mobile banking. Only 14 per cent said that they were still in the initial stages of the launch. “Mobile telephony has become ubiquitous, with a penetration of around three quarters of the population of the country. It is a well acknowledged fact that the mobile platform is being used to a large extent by customers.”The report said that all banks agreed that the maximum usage of this channel was to view account details such as account balance, mini statement and cheque status. This is followed by other transactions such as money transfers, utility payments and mobile payments.At present, around 78 banks offer mobile banking services. The use of smart phones and tablets has also helped increase the traffic on mobile banking transactions. “However, there still remains scope for growth.” Some challenges associated with the adoption of mobile technology are lack of awareness and change in mindset, inability to sync the mobile number with the account number, features of the handset and inconsistent revenue-sharing models.Banks are seen experimenting with various social media channels to build their brand equity, gauge which stream will actually yield more visibility and help promote the organisations’ image, said the report.As compared to public sector banks, private sector and foreign banks have adopted social media more openly and integrated it as a part of their strategy. It is regarded not only as a means to reach out to customers but also to engage with them on a continual basis by providing the latest updates, offers, campaigns, facilitate transactions such as booking movie tickets, fund transfers, addressing grievances and the like.The social media gambit is targeted towards the youth who are found to be spending a large amount of time online. Consequently, banks find it a great way to increase their visibility.

7)‘RBI is keen to issue bank licences’

The Reserve Bank (RBI) is likely to issue a few bank licences during the model code of conduct, which came into force from Wednesday, Union Finance Minister P. Chidambaram said here.“What does the code of conduct have to do with this [bank licence process]. The government and regulators are discharging their normal duties... They [RBI] wish to issue a few licences,” Mr. Chidambaram told reporters at a press conference.“So that’s the indication we have got. We are not interfering with that process, that is, the RBI’s decision,” he added. The Minister also clarified that the Cabinet would continue to take decisions right up to the elections in accordance with the model code of conduct rules, which bars the ruling party from acting to alter the level-playing field during elections. “The Cabinet will clear proposals based on policies announced earlier...no where does it say government functioning should come to a halt,” he said.The Minister is scheduled to address the RBI board on Friday.