Covid-19 treatment cost must not fall on migrant workers: Govt tells states

 The Central government has asked states to ensure that migrant workers returning to cities get housing, health insurance, facemasks and are tested for the coronavirus disease without "any financial burden" on them.

States should help workers with periodic medical tests and make certain that their children are enrolled in schools “to prevent any adverse effect on education,” said the Union labour and employment ministry.

“The migrant worker should not be put to any financial burden on account of testing and any treatment/quarantine required to be undertaken by them,” said on Tuesday the 'advisory guidelines to State governments for the welfare of migrant workers returning to destination states in the backdrop of Covid-19'.

States have been asked to maintain a database of migrant workers and to map whether such workers are being covered under social security schemes or not.

ALSO READ: Gujarat: Migrant workers' employers asked to follow Covid-19 norms

“A proper database of migrant workers is a preliminary step in order to identify and protect vulnerability among them…This data should also be shared with the concerned labour authorities to facilitate compliance with the existing labour laws relating to wages, occupational safety and health and working conditions,” the guidelines added.

States have been advised to enrol migrant workers under the Aayushman Bharat scheme to provide them health insurance cover of Rs 5 lakh per family a year for secondary and tertiary care hospitalisation. For construction workers who migrate, the States have been advised to incur expenditure towards payment of premium for state insurance schemes. The Building and Other Construction Workers’ funds can be utilised for this purpose, the Central government has said.

The Centre has also asked States to issue guidelines to employers to take care of the needs of migrant workers. Apart from adequate availability of sanitizers, face masks, soaps at the workplace, “the employers should also be encouraged to provide one time transportation allowance/journey fare to migrant workers.” “Employers should also be encouraged to provide wages according to prevailing labour laws; facilitate provision for suitable housing arrangement and ensure enrolment of the migrant workmen in existing social security and welfare schemes,” the Union labour and employment ministry said.

ALSO READ: Covid-19: Strengthening rural jobs scheme critical to address migrant woes

The State Governments have been asked to provide an online single window grievance redressal system, including a toll free helpline number to assist the migrant workers in distress.

The national lockdown imposed by the Central government in March to deal with the Covid-19 pandemic led a reverse migration. Workers left cities to go back to their villages as industries were shut and paying off house rent or taking care of basic needs became a challenge, apart from health concerns. According to official estimates, 500,000-600,000 workers had to walk back home on foot as public transportation was not available to them. They travelled miles on foot to reach their villages. According to one official estimate, around 8 million workers migrated back to work after the national lockdown.

RBI denies dipping into gold reserves, cites other factors for fluctuations

India’s central bank hasn’t sold any gold recently nor is trading in the metal, the monetary authority said in a tweet on Sunday.
The Economic Times had reported on Friday that the Reserve Bank of India started trading in gold actively since July, buying gold worth $5.1 billion and selling $1.15 billion worth. The newspaper cited data from the RBI’s Weekly Statistical Supplement.

“The fluctuation in value depicted in Weekly Statistical Supplement is due to change in frequency of revaluation from monthly to weekly basis and is based on international prices of gold and exchange rates,” the RBI said in the tweet.

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Reports have appeared in certain sections of media that RBI has been selling/ trading in gold of late. It is clarified that RBI has not sold any gold or trading in it. (1/1)
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The central bank’s gold reserves is valued at about $27 billion as of October 18, latest data showed.

For these 5 failures of fiscal policy, the Modi govt can't blame RBI

Instead of blaming the central bank at every opportunity for its poor stewardship of the economy, India’s finance ministry should reflect on its own record, especially its five failures of fiscal policy in almost as many years.
The most obvious is the goods and services tax. A month after the levy went into effect in July 2017, a little over 7 percent of taxpayers failed to comply with the requirement that every business with annual turnover of 7.5 million rupees ($108,000) or more file three returns every month1.

Analysts chalked it up to software glitches.
However, now that the turnover threshold has been relaxed by 33 percent, the returns process simplified, and the computer network made more robust, the noncompliance rate is approaching 29 percent. This is alarming. Compared with targets, brokerages are expecting a shortfall in the federal government’s GST kitty of as much as 1 trillion rupees in the fiscal year that will end in March.
With general elections due by May, the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi is aggressively tweaking the botched tax. One idea, which may be implemented this week, is to triple the exemption limit for GST registration, letting many more small businesses off the hook. That’s a belated recognition of the complexity of the tax and its compliance burden.
GST was a long-delayed attempt to replace a bewildering array of sub-national taxation with a unified levy. But it wasn’t the only fiscal reform marred by weak design and poor implementation. A laudable attempt to sever the link between the nation’s fiscal health and the malaise in the power sector has also come a cropper.
Between them, electricity distribution companies of Indian states had racked up debt of 4.3 trillion rupees. Their finances were a shambles, owing in major part to being forced to provide free electricity to farmers, crimping their ability to buy power from producers and pay for it on time.
It was sensible of New Delhi to seek a one-time cleanup by moving 75 percent of distribution companies’ debt to the balance sheets of state governments as bonds. While 86 percent of that loan-to-bond swap has happened, healthier distribution utilities haven’t necessarily mended their ways. Punjab, one of the worst offenders, is losing 0.77 rupee on every kilowatt-hour it supplies.
Transmission and distribution losses in all states participating in the program are almost 21 percent, way above the 15 percent target. Indebted power generation companies are sitting on 75,000 megawatts of stranded capacity, and the central bank is getting blamed for not letting lenders pretend their money is safe.
Unchecked profligacy, which has been masked by a drop in energy subsidies (thanks to low global oil prices), has been a third oversight. Even with a significant boost to the share of taxes transferred to the 29 states, their deficits are still bumping up against the ceiling imposed by New Delhi. Instead of creating economic and social infrastructure, Indian states are in a race to spend money on farm debt waivers, again an act of political expediency.
A deepening agrarian crisis is stoking expectations of a nationwide per-acre farm subsidy. Kotak Institutional Equities Research reckons this would cost an “unpalatable” 1.3 percent of GDP at a minimum.
Fourth, a stalled privatization program, whose revival was expected to be a litmus test of Modi’s 2014 election promise of “minimum government, maximum governance,” has gone nowhere: The government sold its stakes in one public-sector company to another, acting no differently from past administrations. In hopeless cases, state-owned Life Insurance Corp. was drafted into national service.
The final fiscal miss is also the broadest. The Modi government has failed to leave a pro-business stamp on policy, which continues to be inquisitorial in dealing with taxpayers and gimmicky when trying to make the numbers. The party that came to power by promising to end “tax terror” has watched helplessly as revenue collectors have harassed startups. Stock-market investors have been treated to an unwelcome revival of the long-term capital gains tax. Bad practices of previous governments — announcing grand welfare programs and leaving them unfunded — continue.
India’s general government debt of about 70 percent of GDP in 2017 isn’t much different from China’s, based on IMF estimates. But China, for all its overcapacity issues, at least has used public debt to create assets: India hasn’t. When governments routinely borrow more than 6 percent of GDP, as Indian federal and state administrations do, and yet the private sector doesn’t see new opportunities getting created, it stops investing.
Five years ago, businesses backed Modi hoping he would revive animal spirits. That hasn’t happened, with new projects announced in the December quarter at their lowest in 14 years. Although high real interest rates are partly to blame, fiscal failures outweigh monetary miscalculations.
1. Businesses with turnover of between 2 million and 7.5 million rupees can opt for a flat tax on their output, but they don't get credit for the taxes paid on inputs. Only tiny enterprises with annual sales of less than 2 million rupees are exempted from GST.

Govt set to release Rs 286.15-bn bank recapitalisation funds before Dec-end

The central government would release Rs 286.15 billion before the end of this month towards a fresh tranche of funds to recapitalise state-run banks, according to a source in the finance ministry.
Of this, United Bank of India is likely to get Rs 21.59 billion, Central Bank of India Rs 16.78 billion, Bank of India Rs 100.86 billion, Uco Bank Rs 30.56 billion, Oriental Bank of Commerce Rs 55 billion, Bank of Maharashtra Rs 44.98 billion, and Syndicate Bank Rs 16.38 billion.

It was reported earlier that the government would infuse Rs 830 billion into public-sector banks in the remaining months of 2018-19, taking capital injection into lenders to Rs 1.06 trillion during the year.
It had sought Parliament’s approval for Rs 410 billion through the second batch of the supplementary demand for grants. The Budget had announced a capital infusion of Rs 650 billion.
Financial Services Secretary Rajiv Kumar had earlier said that there were three non-PCA (prompt corrective action) banks that were near the PCA limit, and four-five PCA banks that could come out of PCA.