financeminister.in

Attributing the inflation to global price pressures Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee today assured that the government and RBI together will be able to contain the rising inflation.

The inflation in the country currently has reached 9.78 % in the month of August. A 0.56% increase from the 9.22% in the previous month.

To tame the ever rising inflation, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has again increased the repo rate by 50 basis points. The new repo rate is 8 percent. The repo rate is the rate at which the central bank lends money to other banks.

With this 11th interest rate hike in the last 15 months, RBI is making it clear that it is taking the rising inflation very seriously.

The increase in repo rate is expected to affect auto loans, home loans, personal loans and other borrowings. The loans are now going to cost more.

Sahaj - for salaried people and Sugam - for small businessmen and professionals, are the two income tax returns filing forms introduced by the Income tax department aimed at simplifying income tax filing.

The forms are specially targeting the small businessmen and salaried persons and is another step in making tax filing more user friendly and simpler.

Government is also going ahead with the plans to exempt salaried income people earning below 5 lakhs from filing income tax returns. They only have to file their tax returns if they request any income tax refund.

Maintaining growth while containing inflation and including populist measures to satisfy the voters during upcoming state Government elections in strategic states are some of the major challenges that Finance Minister Mr. Pranabh Mukherjee is facing ahead of the union budget 2011.

Inflation remains the utmost priority for the Minister as the nation is reeling under rising food price. There could be adjustments in the income tax slabs to give some relief to the middle income group.

Finance minister Pranabh Mukherjee has told reporters in New Delhi that he will be raising the issue of inflation with State finance ministers when he meets them on January 19. He will be meeting the state finance ministers to discuss about the forth coming union budget.

Mr Mukherjee indicated that the current level of food inflation is not acceptable and need to be tackled.

In the meantime, inflation has increased to 8.43 percent in December from a 7.48 in November.

Document identification number or DIN is the new system of identification number that Income tax department has introduced for the tax payers.

The DIN will be generated by the income tax department and is made mandatory for any income tax related communication including filing of income tax returns. Any communication that does not include the Document identification number (DIN) will be considered invalid according to section 282b of the Income Tax Act.

Finance Minister Mr. Pranabh Mukherjee says he will stick to the 8.5 percent growth for the current fiscal despite IMF forecasting a higher 9.5% growth for the countries economy.

Finance Minister was speaking at a conference hosted by industry body CII in New Delhi. Mr Mukherjee also said that the effect of Eurozone crisis will have very less impact on the country and he appreciated Indian banking sector for its descipline and maintaining a stable financial environment.

India has made clear that it preferrs better regulatory mechanism instead of imposing levy on banks for future bail outs.

Finance Minister Pranabh Mukherjee conveyed India's stand to the chairman of the presidential committee for the G-20 meeting on Friday.

While US, Britain and many European countries are supporting a levy on banks and other financial institutions, countries like India, Canada and Australia are opposed to the idea.

Reserve bank of India (RBI) today hiked the short-term lending and borrowing rates and the portion of money banks deposit with it by 25 basis points each.

The repurchase rate (repo), reverse repurchase rate (reverse repo) to 5.25 per cent and 3.75 per cent, respectively. It also set the Cash Reserve Ratio (CRR) to 6 per cent.

On Tuesday April 20, Reserve bank of India (RBI) will be reviewing the country's monetary policy. Economists are are anticipating hikes in policy rates.

It would be a tough walk for RBI to contain rising inflation and to propel growth at the same time. Market is eagerly watching RBI's next steps.