A World of Thoughts

January 26th was the Customs Day. Four years back I was invited to the celebrations in Coimbatore. For the last few years, I do not find myself, getting invited! Maybe, because I 'pay' much lesser taxes and duties these days. Well, I wanted to draw your attention to the message given by our FM, Mrs Nirmal Sitharaman on this day  at New Delhi, this year. https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/economy/policy/work-focus-of-indian-customs-shifted-to-trade-facilitation-fm-nirmala-sitharaman/articleshow/80480576.cms See the report in the Economic Times the next day (27th). The ideas and the thoughts are absolutely lofty. Yes, Customs should become 'people' friendly and do 'business and trade facilitation' from now onwards. And that the Customs is going through a 'transformative process' and become more 'people centric'. I could not but help recollecting a similar lofty statement made by the then FM, Yaswant Sinha, in the year 1998 when he took over

  When it comes to electricity, somehow, the rights of the consumers were the same as what happens with the rights of the tax payers! NO RIGHTS! Despite the fact that there were many rules laid out in the Supply and Distribution code of almost all the State Regulations as well as in the Central Regulations, none of these were ever implemented. For instance, there is a penalty for not supplying power for more than one hour without announcement. Or, stated in a different way, an unannounced power cut will have to be compensated by the Distribution Company! Please show me one distribution company that paid this compensation to the consumer when they cut the power, without making a prior announcement. Well, in the last year, they have been pulling themselves up and trying to abide by the rules that were laid down by the regulatory bodies. Now, the new Rule Book! Electricity (Rights of Consumers) Rules 2020! Most of the points raised in it are welcome. Post Paid and Pre-paid, transparent si

Jinko, a solar semiconductor manufacturer claims that they have achieved a record breaking 24.9% of energy conversion efficiency. The records on conversion efficiency has been climbing slowly in the last decade. Last year before the end of 2020, the efficiencies centered around 22% of energy conversion from light to electricity in the case of Mono Crystalline solar modules. Now in the case of Jinko, they have submitted N Type Mono Crystalline solar modules for evaluation and energy conversion efficiency calculation purposes to Institute for Solar Energy Research at Hamelin, Germany.  The press release from the manufacturer quotes their certification and claims to have achieved 24.9% efficiency which is a marked improvement and herald a new phase in the growth of solar power plants. With more and more power plants moving towards renewable sources and a very ambitious plan of reducing carbon footprint by 30 to 35% across the world by 2030 under the Paris Charter, this would be a path bre

There cannot be any doubt on the fact that the Energy cost across the world has been falling down. Petroleum prices have been falling down, we all know. More so the gas prices. Liquified Natural Gas (LNG) has been falling down in its price to less than $3 per MMBTU. At the same time Indian prices of LNG seem to hover around $11 and $12 per MMBTU which makes it not so very attractive. As our Prime Minister has remarked, energy dependent on LNG than on Oil would be cleaner, cheaper and better. There cannot be any doubts on this. However, price is a deciding and motivating factor. Our analysis of power generation using gas in lieu of coal does not reduce the cost of power production markedly. If the price of gas is closer to that of international prices, then we can find it attractive and better than power from coal based power. 'A push' from the PM would certainly be good. This would require the government to scale down its duty and tax structures and also discourage concessionai

This article is in line with what I was writing about in the last few months.  We want the cross subsidy scrapped to make a uniform and simple tariff structure. And a market decided power price! Cross subsidy is not only a problem for the industries but also for generators. In addition it is also a grand modifier of the market and is a big problem for the Distribution Company.  In Tamil there is a proverb which likens a person who goes through pain and enjoys it to a dog that is biting a dry bone. Since the bone is so dry and her own teeth so weak, the blood oozes out from the gums in her mouth and the dog things that it is the blood from the bone! Whereas the truth is that it is her own blood! In order to save the dog from bleeding if you try to take the bone from her, it will not allow you to take it either! You cannot save the dog easily.  TANGEDCO and other Discoms in electricity business are more are less like that. They 'think' cross subsidy is good for them but in realit

  First round of relief in terms of work to be done, for small GST payers has at last, come about! After pestering with the government for over two years now, the first major reduction in documentation and filing has been effected! All those GST tax payers who are having a turnover upto Rupees Five Crores may file their returns on a quarterly basis. Filing every month three returns apart from paying tax on a monthly basis was eating out the resources of the small businesses. Now, the government has announced that those people who are making five crores or less may file on a quarterly basis. But, of course, taxes have to be paid on a monthly basis! And in order to be eligible for this scheme, they should have paid their taxes till October and filed GSTR 3B for Oct 2020 before Nov 30, 2020. This would lessen the amount of work done by the small GST payers by almost fifty percent! Thank you, Government. Better late than never!  

Not all countries are spinning down the path of recession because of Covid.  Of course, we know that China has long come out of the issue and has registered a growth in the second quarter onwards. Expected to grow at an annual growth rate of 2.1% this year, hitting a 44 year low in their growth rate! Australia registered a growth of 3.3% in the last quarter. It fell into a recession, pushed in by the Corona Virus, after nearly three decades! Found itself controlling the virus and jumping out of the recession quickly. People expect Australia to further move ahead and mark the year end with a sharp growth in its economy. World's third largest economy, read Japan, has also moved out of the recession in the last quarter of this year. Japan is leading the 'Zoom Boom' with an impressive 5.5% growth in the third quarter. Japan has just signed off world's biggest trade deal, Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP)! Only the previous quarter, Japan had its economy shr