Business Today 7 May 2017

The good news about the non-performing asset (NPA) crisis is that in the past two years, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and the government have forced public sector banks to recognise bad loans and make provisions for it. And the government has, in the past couple of years, tried to tackle the problem through a slew of measures, like the strategic debt restructuring mechanism (SDR), to throw out existing management and the newly enacted bankruptcy law. Unlike in the past, no one is trying to brush the mountain of NPAs under the carpet, or turn a blind eye to the problem. In the latest economic survey, Chief Economic Advisor Arvind Subramanian devoted considerable space to the bad loans and “twin balance sheet” problem (the fact that balance sheets of…

Telecom War: Now It Is a Fight to Finish This refers to your cover story on telecom (The Battle for India, April 23). It was a colourful presentation of battles with eyes for their market supremacy. Though telecom is a sunrise industry, the effect of new generation mobile telephony services has not permeated strongly on economies due to policy aberrations, and scandals. While there are enough reasons against Reliance Jio for its present business pattern as it stands to subsume other competitors and restricts their industry share – resulting in merger of Vodafone and Idea and pushing down the ranking of Airtel, the blame cannot be apportioned only at the doors of Reliance Jio, as other operators prior to this evidently indulged in cartelisation and forced the users to unwillingly…

STAY CONNECTED WITH US ON www.facebook.com/BusinessToday @BT_India NEWS India’s Next President and VP: Who Will Be BJP's Choice? The choice of the President and VP may help the BJP in building a pan-India footprint before the 2019 general elections businesstoday.in/presidentialrace-contenders GST Bill: Six Issues May Haunt Taxpayers, Consumers The procedural issues, if not addressed properly, would lead to litigations businesstoday.in/gstbill-taxpayers Bank Charges That Most Have No Clue About Banks normally charge clients for a plethora of services – PIN generation, demand draft, and even account balance updates via SMS on phone – to recover their costs businesstoday.in/bankservice-charges Solar Tenders, Auctions Slowing Down in India: Report Many states complain that DISCOMs are resorting to power cuts instead of buying power on the exchanges to save on costs businesstoday.in/solarpower-auction Securing Your Data…

10 lakh Is the rise in the number of shops accepting card payments since demonetisation on November 8, 2016. The number rose from 15 lakh to 25 lakh during the period, according to the National Payments Corporation of India. QUOTE "There are 20 to 30 large accounts where people have to realise that banks have to be repaid. If the current promoters are not in a position to repay, they have to develop alternative corporate strategies so that the companies pay back" Finance Minister Arun Jaitley in Parliament A POWER-FUL BLOW In a blow to Adani Power and Tata Power with respect to their projects at Mundra, the Supreme Court has set aside the appeal for compensatory tariff filed by the companies with the Appellate Tribunal for Electricity. This will…

18 SPOTLIGHT ON SERVICE MSMEs WHAT: Seminar for MSMES in the Services Sector WHEN: April 18, Noida WHAT TO LOOK FOR: MSMES in the services sector are flourishing and account for over 30 per cent of the national GDP. In fact, over 68 per cent of all working MSME enterprises, both in the formal as well as informal sectors, are engaged in service activities. Against this background, the Ministry of Commerce and Industry, Government of India; the Services Export Promotion Council and CII are jointly organizing the Global Exhibition on Services to provide a fillip to the Indian service enterprisers. 20-21 FOOD FOR THOUGHT WHAT: Made in India - Food Importers Meet 2017 WHEN: April 20-21, Gurgaon WHAT TO LOOK FOR: The FICCI event will focus on the road ahead…

On April 13, 2017, Sandeep Nayak, Chief Executive and Executive Director at Centrum Broking, was wrapping up his work before partying with his team ahead of the long weekend. The reason: The firm's wealth management arm had recorded the highest ever sales for the month of March (2017), the first time since 2011, when the company started the wealth management business. Today it manages assets over ₹10,000 crore. “Thanks to the buoyancy in the equity market, we have been able to amass highest-ever assets under management (AUM) in a single month,” says Nayak, who real- ises that investors do not have any other avenue to invest except in equities. With real estate and commodities going through a slump, and post-tax returns of bank fixed deposits being around 5 per cent,…