The Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs (CBIC) has rationalised GST refund provisions, including giving option to taxpayers to withdraw application. It has amended Goods and Services Tax (GST) rules and has excluded the time period from date of ling of refund application to date of issuance of deficiency memo by the officer from the overall time limit to le refund application. Dhruva Advisors LLP Niraj Bagri said many GST refund applications were returned on the grounds of deficiency seeking the company to le a fresh application. The ling of a rectified refund application was treated as a new refund application. "In several instances, though the original refund application was led within the time limit of 2 years, the department has been considering the date of rectified refund application as the relevant date resulting in rejections on the ground of breach of time limits. "CBIC has put rest to this controversy, by amending the rule, and providing that the time period from the date of ling of original refund application till the time the deciency letter is issued, will be excluded for determining the two-year period," Bagri said. Athena Law Associates Partner Pawan Arora said now refund application can be withdrawn at any time prior to issuance of provisional/ nal refund order or refund payment/ withhold/ rejection order. Also, the amendments in refund rules have resolved the biggest dispute regarding time limit of fresh ling of refund application after receipt of deciency notice. "Now, the time period up to date of communication of deficiency notice shall not be counted in the two years limitation for fresh refund application. In my view it should be given retrospective effect to dispose of the pending litigations on this issue before the courts," Arora added. EY Tax Partner Abhishek Jain welcomed the amendments, saying they were awaited and advocated by the industry players for a long time. AMRG & Associates Senior Partner Rajat Mohan said changes in the rules would help numerous taxpayers, including exporters. Current amendments to GST rules will also empower taxpayers to withdraw the GST refund application to correct any clerical mistakes that may have crept in.
Source: Economic Times
The revamped Service Exports From India Scheme (SEIS) may be part of the new five-year Foreign Trade Policy (FTP), which will be effective from October 2021, sources told FE.The commerce ministry is weighing a proposal to overhaul a key scheme for services exporters to make it more broad-based and fool proof so that a wider pool of businesses, especially Covid-hit MSMEs, get the succour. The revamped Service Exports From India Scheme (SEIS) may be part of the new five-year Foreign Trade Policy (FTP), which will be effective from October 2021, sources told FE. However, given the resource crunch faced by the government in the wake of the pandemic and the growing requirement of healthcare spending, much depends on the finance ministry’s approval to any such scheme, one of the sources said. Under the extant scheme, the government offers exporters duty credit scrips at 5-7% of the net foreign exchange earned, depending on the nature of services.The commerce ministry has also held discussions with exporters on the feasibility of bringing in a tax refund scheme for services exporters in future, along the lines of the Remission of Duties and Taxes on Exported Products (RoDTEP) announced for merchandise exporters, another source said. However, given that services are fundamentally different from manufacturing, coming out with such a scheme for services and assessing refund rates will be a humongous exercise and may be prone to errors, some analysts say. The resource-starved government may also reduce benefits for consultancy and certain other professional services that it thinks corner a sizeable chunk of incentives. Moreover, a section of the government believes that since few players are grabbing most of the SEIS incentives, the scheme should be altered in such a fashion that it helps a large number of small businesses as well. Factoring in the government’s resource woes, the state-backed Services Export Promotion Council (SEPC) has proposed that the Centre limit the SEIS benefits to a maximum of `5 crore per exporter for various services sectors. However, sectors, including travel and tourism, healthcare, education and aviation, which have been worst hit by the pandemic should be exempted from this ceiling and allowed the full entitlement, according to the SEPC. This will take care of the interest of thousands of MSMEs in the sector, the SEPC feels. Already, services exporters, struggling to cope with the pandemic, have urged the government to release SEIS benefits for FY20 at the earliest, which could be to the tune of Rs 3,000-4,000 crore. They also argue that their concerns shouldn’t be relegated to background. While merchandise exporters, they argue, have been allocated as much as Rs 39,079 crore for FY20 under the Merchandise Export from India Scheme (MEIS), the entitlement of services exporters under the SEIS for the same year would be about a tenth of that. So, the government shouldn’t have problem in clearing the SEIS dues. Of course, most of the MEIS benefits are also yet to be released, mainly due to the revenue shortage faced by the government in the wake of the pandemic. However, given that the pandemic has battered sectors like travel & tourism, aviation and education like no other, services exporters say without fast release of SEIS dues, many of these entities will cease to exist soon.The SEPC has said that the SEIS is the only incentive scheme available to services exporters, and the eligible ones have already been factoring in the incentives in their pricing and business sustainability strategies. The SEIS was introduced in the Foreign Trade Policy (FTP) for 2015-20; the validity of the FTP has now been extended up to September 2021. However, unlike the MEIS, there is no notification so far on the SEIS for 2019-20, even though it is a part of the current FTP.Services exports dropped almost 6% year-on-year in FY21 to $203 billion due to the pandemic, while merchandise exports contracted by just over 7% to about $291 billion, according to a quick estimate by the commerce ministry. Services trade surplus has been substantially offsetting the merchandise trade deficit. Despite the pandemic, thanks to an $86-billion surplus in services trade in FY21, the overall trade deficit dropped to just $13 billion.
Source: Financial Express
Flow of deposits from non-resident Indians hit a four-year low in the financial year 2020-21 mainly due to contraction in foreign currency deposits, latest data released by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) showed. The flow of total NRI deposits during the financial year 2020-21 was $7.3 billion as compared to $8.6 billion in FY20. This was the lowest flow of NRI deposits since 2016-17 when these deposits contracted by $12.3 billion. There are three kinds of deposit accounts of Indian banks where NRIs or PIOs (persons of Indian origin) can park their funds — NRE (non-resident ...
Source: Business Standard
Merchandise exports nearly trebled in April to $30.63 billion over the same period last year Global recovery has aided the recent jump in merchandise exports, exporters said, adding that their profit margins could remain under pressure. Merchandise exports nearly trebled in April to $30.63 billion over the same period last year. They grew 17.62 per cent compared to April 2019. While the three-fold jump in exports was aided by a low base effect, growth was also on account of global recovery, with an increase in demand, especially from developed nations, particularly from the US and some European countries. Exporters said order booking had been encouraging. Engineering ...........
Source: Business Standard
Data to be released by month-end; FY22 gap may widen to 7.15% against BE of 6.8%, say experts The government’s fiscal deficit for the financial year ended March 2021 (FY21) is expected to be around 9 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP) compared to the revised estimate (RE) of 9.5 per cent. However, in the current financial year (FY22, or April 2021-March 2022), the gap could be higher than the budgeted 6.8 per cent as spending is expected to go up and GDP bound to shrink owing to the second wave of Covid, say experts. Sources in the government say while revenue collections have exceeded RE in FY21, so has expenditure, indicating the fiscal deficit is likely to be
Source: Business Standard
The ReFashion Hub is a collective that aims to raise awareness and drive conversation about water stewardship in India’s textile industry for long term positive climate impact. As a part of this initiative, a national level multi-stakeholder consultation was organized by Centre for Responsible Business (CRB) with support from Alliance For Water Stewardship and Water Management Forum (under Institute of Engineers India), on 18 May 2021, to build consensus on establishing wastewater as a resource and dealing with it in a sustainable way by the textile industry. Shri Upendra Prasad Singh, Secretary, Ministry of Textiles delivered the keynote address and subject matter experts such as Mr. Rijit Sengupta, CEO, CRB, Er. Narendra Singh, President, Institution of Engineers of India, Dr K Ramesh, Senior Manager – Process Engineering/R&D, Tamil Nadu Water Investment Company, Chetan Kumar Sangole, Head, Sustainability Desk, Mahratta Chamber of Commerce, Industry and Agriculture, Ankur Khanna (Owner, Khanna Industries), Dinesh Chopra (Member, Indian Chemicals Council and Ex-Director, Honeywell) and Archana Datta, National Coordinator, for India, Switch Asia – RPAC, United Nations Environment Program, discussed various aspects of wastewater reuse, policy interventions and incentives as panelists of the workshop. During the virtual conference, industry leaders, textile industry bodies, government and development agencies addressed various aspects of wastewater reuse, holistic perspective of wastewater as a resource, policy recommendations, scheme incentives, and built a collaborative approach towards long-term and sustained action on waste management by the textile industry in India. Assuring his support to the campaign, Shri Upendra Prasad Singh, Secretary, Minister of Textiles, said, “Wastewater management is critical for survival of the textile industry in India and not a subject of charity. It is the responsibility of all stakeholders including the government, textile bodies and industries to invest in green technologies that conserve water.” Underlining the need for such initiatives he further said “There is enough knowledge on the supply side of water and wastewater management but not on the demand side. Efficient water and wastewater management can help suppliers/buyers engage brands/consumers.” Further, he suggested ‘condition assessment of clusters’ to generate baseline about need for water and wastewater management in textile and other high water-use clusters. Finally, he opined there is not as much awareness and information about water footprint of industries as is there on carbon/energy footprint and hence there is a need to raise awareness and knowledge about its importance. A 2019 World Resources Institute (WRI) report ranked India as the 13th most water stressed country globally. The Indian textile industry alone uses 425,000,000 gallons of water daily and approximately 500 gallons of water are used in the production of just one pair of jeans[1]. Globally, by 2050, the textile industry is expected to double its water contamination, making it the second-largest polluting industry on earth. One of the major causes of concern is the high usage of water and the excessive water pollution that is caused especially in dyeing and processing. Fatal contamination of water sources has led to a gamut of regulations for the treatment and discharge of wastewater. Set up of common effluent treatment plants (CETPs) and, in some cases, ZLD systems has become a norm in India. Mr. Rijit Sengupta, CEO, CRB said, “Centre for Responsible Business has the mandate to promote sustainability, sustainable businesses and also oversee how businesses integrate sustainability in their core operations. In a country like India, when we talk about sustainability there is a need to strike a balance between the three aspects – economic, social and environmental, which involves trade-offs and compromises. In case of water, this implies striking the balance between – water as a key industrial input, societal need for equitable access to water and ensuring conservation of water as a resource. In our quest to find solutions to help strike this balance, CRB advocates for applying the principles of circular economy/resource efficiency in industrial/sectoral strategies to enable water use efficiency. Finally, the process of finding solutions is also critical and needs to be co-designed locally based on multi-stakeholder collaboration.” During the multi-stakeholder consultation, it was discussed that there is a need to raise awareness on water stewardship, existing incentives and policies that aim to address the issue of water conservation in the textile industry. Experts also urged the industry to adapt sustainable business practices and ensure that they look at wastewater as a resource. It was highlighted that the model used in Haridwar and Sarai which is hybrid annuity model-based sewage treatment plant has been successful and the textile industry can apply learnings from there for wastewater treatment. A key point for consideration was that current and updated data will underpin any intervention that is planned. Moreover, the Ministry of Textiles can facilitate awareness programs and enable cross location learnings to develop a sustainable roadmap for the sector in consultation and collaboration with other ministries. There is a need to enable the textile processing industry for process optimization by adopting best clean techniques, incentives for automation and up-gradation of machinery and effective mechanisms to reuse water. Industries should be apprised of clear policies and how it can provide cost benefits. Cross sectoral learnings are essential to track technological developments in other sectors and customize those for the textile industry to ensure best possible and sustainable wastewater treatment. The industry and governments at various levels are collaborating on solutions to address this crisis. Moreover, consumers are being more conscious of sustainable production and consumption. It is evident that a long term, collaborative approach towards better water management in the sector is required.
Source: India Education Diary
The Global Trade Update by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) on Wednesday said that in Q1 2021, the value of global trade in goods and services grew by about 4 per cent quarter-over-quarter and by about 10 per cent year-over-year. In Q1 2021, the value of trade in goods was higher than pre-pandemic level, but trade in services remains substantially below averages. India, China and South Africa have fared “relatively better” than other major economies in imports and exports in the first quarter of this year, according to the latest UN data which said that global trade recovery from the COVID-19 crisis hit a record high during in the same period. The Global Trade Update by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) on Wednesday said that in Q1 2021, the value of global trade in goods and services grew by about 4 per cent quarter-over-quarter and by about 10 per cent year-over-year. ”Importantly, global trade in Q1 2021 was higher than pre-crisis levels, with an increase of about 3 per cent relative to Q1 2019,” it said, adding that the trade rebound of Q1 2021 continues to be driven by the strong export performance of East Asian economies.In Q1 2021, the value of trade in goods was higher than pre-pandemic level, but trade in services remains substantially below averages. During the first quarter of 2021, global trade of COVID-19 related products remained strong.The UNCTAD data said that import and export trends for some of the world’s major trading economies further illustrate the recovery patterns of Q1 2021. With a few exceptions, trade in major economies recovered from the fall of 2020.However, the large increases are due to the low base for 2020 and trade in many of the major economies was still below 2019 averages. The trend of a stronger recovery for goods relative to services is common to all major economies. ”China, India and South Africa have fared relatively better than other major economies during Q1 2021. China’s exports, in particular, registered a strong increase not only from 2020 averages but also in relation to pre-pandemic levels. In contrast, exports from the Russian Federation remained well below 2019 averages,” it said. The data for India said that import of goods grew 45 per cent in Q1 2021 relative to the 2020 average while services imports were up 14 per cent. Export of goods for India grew 26 per cent for the period under review while services exports grew 2 per cent. Further, import of goods grew 10 per cent in Q1 2021 relative to the 2019 average while services imports were up 2 per cent. Export of goods for India grew 7 per cent for this period while services exports declined 3 per cent. UNCTAD said globally the ongoing trade recovery comprises most sectors. During Q1 2021, trade continued to rebound not only in sectors related to COVID-19 such as pharmaceuticals, communication and office equipment but also increased for most other sectors, such as minerals and agri-food. In contrast, the energy sector continues to lag behind and international trade of transport equipment remains well below averages, the UNCTAD said. Looking forward, the UNCTAD said trade is expected to continue growing into 2021. Trade growth is expected to remain stronger for East Asia and developed countries, while still lagging for many other countries. The value of global trade in goods and services is forecast to reach 6.6 trillion dollars in the second quarter of 2021, equivalent to a year-over-year increase of about 31 per cent relative to the lowest point of 2020 and of about 3 per cent to the pre-pandemic levels of 2019. Trade growth is expected to remain strong in the second half of 2021, the overall forecast for 2021 indicates an increase of about 16 per cent from the lowest point of 2020 (19 per cent for goods and 8 per cent for services). Giving the global trade outlook for 2021, the UNCTAD said the positive outlook for 2021 remains largely dependent on subsiding pandemic restrictions. ”Nevertheless, the fiscal stimulus packages, particularly in developed countries, are expected to strongly support the global trade recovery throughout 2021. The value of global trade should also rise due to positive trends across commodity prices. ”Still, there is uncertainty about how trade patterns will be shaped throughout this period,” it said. Highlighting that the economic recovery will be uneven, it said that some economies are posed to rebound stronger and faster than others. ”In particular, the economies of China and the United States of America are expected to be the main drivers of global growth during 2021,” it said, adding that this should also have positive effects on countries whose trade is relatively more integrated with them (such as East Asian countries, Canada and Mexico). On the other hand, the COVID-19 pandemic is expected to continue disrupting the economies and trade of many developing countries, at least throughout 2021. The global economy shrank by 4.3 per cent last year, over two-and-a-half times more than during the global financial crisis of 2009. In April last year, countries took fiscal measures and central banks together injected a whopping USD 14 trillion as part of their efforts to mitigate the challenges posed by the novel coronavirus pandemic. The International Monetary Fund last month said that the global recovery is expected to be asynchronous and divergent between advanced and emerging market economies.
Source: Financial Express
Global trade’s recovery from the COVID-19 crisis hit a record high in the first quarter of 2021, increasing by 10 per cent year-over-year and 4 per cent quarter-over-quarter, according to UNCTAD’s Global Trade Update released today. The rebound continued to be largely fuelled by trade in goods. In contrast, trade in services continued to lag behind. The rebound is expected to continue into Q2 2021, with the value of global trade in goods and services forecast to reach $6.6 trillion. This is equivalent to a year-over-year increase of about 31 per cent relative to the lowest point of 2020 and of about 3 per cent relative to the pre-pandemic levels of 2019, the UNCTAD report said. UNCTAD forecasts trade growth for 2021 at about 16 per cent (in values). Still, the positive outlook is largely dependent on reducing pandemic restrictions, a persisting positive trend in commodity prices, overall restraints from trade protectionist policies, and supportive macroeconomic and fiscal conditions. Trade recovery remains uneven, the report highlights, especially among developing countries, with exports from East Asia rebounding substantially faster. East Asian economies are also behind the recovery of trade among developing countries (SouthSouth trade). When trade figures from East Asian developing economies are excluded, South-South trade remains below averages. Among major economies, China's exports continue to register a strong increase not only from 2020 averages but also in relation to pre-pandemic levels. In contrast, exports from Russia remain below 2019 averages. Home Pakistan: Export-led economic growth is only solution (Source: Naqi Zafar, Business Recorder, May 20, 2021) All Pakistan Textile Mills Association (APTMA) has underscored the need for a long-term textile policy, continuation of Regionally Competitive energy Tariffs (RCETs) and supply of gas/RLNG for increased investment and enhancement of production and export capacity. The APTMA suggestions for the government are pertinent and valid. According to APTMA, export-led economic growth is the only viable and sustainable solution to steer the country towards a bright future. In recent years, a number of countries such as China, South Korea, Singapore, Hong Kong and Vietnam have experienced rapid growth across a number of export industries. Unfortunately, however, successive governments have not recognised the importance of export-led economic growth. Last but not least, a noted industrialist in his op-ed carried by the newspaper has raised a key question about government’s highly questionable approach to export-oriented sectors. He has asked: “Where are billions of dollars collected as EDS [Export Development Surcharge]?” The government owes him an answer.
Source: Fibre2Fashion
