Another Sign of Recovery

The direct tax collection figures can indicate whether an economy is doing well or not. If the economy is passing through a slowdown and there is a contraction in industrial production and corporate earnings then the direct tax collected thereof would also be low. Also, in the event of a economic slowdown (if not recession) even if the direct tax collections, at least, matches with that of the figures prevailing in the good times then it is indeed a sign of recovery.

There were concerns among the policy makers of a lower mop up of direct taxes due to reduced corporate earnings. But, the all India figures for direct tax collection till September 5, totalling Rs. 90,039.7 crore, is actually higher than what it was for the corresponding period last year.

The finance ministry's projection for direct tax collection in the current fiscal year is about Rs. 400,000 crore. The last year's collection was targeted at Rs. 345,000 crore while the actual collection was lower by Rs. 6,000 crore. (Source: ET)

Two Major Moves By LIC And India Post

I am excited about two major moves going to be taken by two different financial services institutions in India. The first move is by Life Insurance Corporation of India (LIC) and the second one is by the Indian Postal Services Department aka India Post.

LIC will be implementing a project called Enterprise Document Management System (EDMS), which they plan to complete by 2011. It will enable LIC to extend 'Anywhere Anytime' service. They have already launched the project in 2007 partnered with Hewlett Packard (HP). It will enable the policy holders or their nominees to pay LIC premium or claim their settlement payment from any location in India. This would indeed make lives of 230 million policy holders across the country much hassle free. Also, the digitization of record of these policy holders will ensure archival of physical records in electronic form and will eliminate risks of loss or damage to physical records due to natural and other disasters.

The second move that I was referring to, by India Post is that they are going to provide on-site ATMs for their customers. To note India Post has 155,000 locations across the country. This would be a massive value-added service to the post-office savings bank account holders. The hours of waiting in long queues at post-offices for withdrawing or depositing money can be cut down substantially. India Post had 228.9 million savings bank accounts with an aggregate outstanding amount in these accounts of US$ 457.89 million (as on March-end 2009).