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| Saturday, January 8, 2000, Chandigarh, India  
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New
law on consumer protection soon: Sinha
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Website on mental health
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New law on consumer protection soon: Sinha NEW DELHI, Jan 7 (UNI) — Finance Minister Yashwant Sinha today called upon consumer organisations and activists to create awareness among consumers to resist unfair trade practice. While addressing representatives of consumer organisations and consumer activists as part of his ongoing pre-Budget consultations here today, Mr Sinha said that the Government wants to encourage fair competition and bring an end to monopoly. In this context, he said, a competition law and competition policy is expected to be enacted soon. Mr Sinha said as in the past Budget, his government’s endeavour would be to protect the consumers’ interest in the next Budget also. The price situation has improved and inflation is under control and the consumer price index has gone down to zero level which definitely will help the consumers. Responding to a suggestion from a delegate about the review of the Consumer Protection Act, the Minister revealed that the Act is being examined and a new legislation will be enacted soon. During the discussion with the representatives of the consumer organisations, a number of suggestions were received, including creation of a national safety commission for safety in public places, safety in food and water and safety of products. Another suggestion was to ensure quality of food and drugs. In this connection, it was suggested that the testing facility should be upgraded. The consumer organisations welcomed the adoption of the uniform floor rates of taxes in all States and Union Territories and said that these will lead to the end of unhealthy competition among States. They also hailed the passage of the IRDA Bill. However, they suggested that the interests of the consumer should be protected at all costs. Those who participated
in the meeting included Mr R. Desikan, Mr Pradeep Mehta,
Prof Srinivasa Narayana Swamy, Mr S. Pushpavanam, Prof
Munubhai Shah, Dr Sri Ram Khanna, Smt Asha Idnani and Mrs
Pushpa Girimaji. Ministers of State for Finance
Dhananjaya Kumar and B.V. Patil also took part in the
discussion. |
Website on mental health NEW DELHI, Jan 7 (UNI) — Mental disorder is no longer going to be a mind-boggling affair, thanks to India’s first website on mental health launched today. The site, www.mentalhealthindia.com of a renowned psychiatrist, Dr Sanjay Chug, seeks to give access to every possible aspect of mental order, including relationships, sexuality, parenting and stress. Surfers can have on-line chat with psychiatrists and receive replies to their questions even while maintaining their anonymity. “Nothing is associated with more morbidity and ignorance than mental health related issues. The website will disseminate information and increase awareness about the problems,” said Dr Chug, author of “Sexuality and Relationships”. According to him about ten crore Indians need to see a psychiatrist and one out of 50,000 are acutely ill. But there are only 2,000 trained doctors in the country to treat the problem which does not discriminate on the basis of caste, creed, religion and social status. It also deals with all major categories of psychiatric illnesses, medication and psychotherapy with unique Indian clinical outputs, provides for self-analysis and has a daily mental health news, besides quizzes and opinion polls. Designed by the web
erudites, its section on sexuality, one of the largest
causes of mental trauma in the country, covers male and
female sexual anatomy, myths and misconceptions, sexual
disfunctions, masturbation and homosexuality. The site
discusses how relationships go wrong, pitfalls to be
avoided and love, flirting, extra-marital relations and
divorce. |
Uniform sales tax hikes prices NEW DELHI, Jan 7 — The implementation of uniform sales tax structure in many States may have resulted in increased prices of many commodities, but analysts said that it was necessary to contain inflationary tendencies in the long run. The recent notifications by various State Governments for rationalising the tax structure are indicative of the fact that while sales tax has been increased in many products to bring it within the five slab tax structure, wherever sales tax have been in excess of 12 per cent these have not been rationalised downwards. For instance a product with 2 per cent sales tax has gone up to 4 per cent and those with 4 per cent has gone up to either 8 per cent or 12 per cent. “The States have used the need to move to moderate rates of sales taxes, to increase rates, to increase revenue, at the cost of the consumer, and by not having five slabs, but many slabs, clearly not move towards facilitating VAT by 2001”, President of FICCI G.P. Goenka said. The State Finance Ministers’ in meeting convened by the Union Finance Minister had agreed on the implementation of the uniform floor rates by the States and Union Territories from January 1, 2000, phasing out of sales tax based incentives and finalisation of modalities for introduction of value added tax (VAT) from April 1, 2001. Punjab Finance Minister, Capt Kanwaljit Singh had said that on 45 items the prevailing tax rate of Punjab was higher than the agreed rates at the national level. He had said that there was no need for Punjab to lower the prevailing rates of tax on these commodities but minor adjustments with respect to prevailing rates and floor rates of 0,4,8,12 per cent would have to be carried out. Capt Singh had pointed out that the recommendations of the Committee of Finance Ministers could be implemented only if all States and Union Territories do so and could not be implemented in isolation. The Central Government
has assured to compensate the States if they lose revenue
in the initial period and the National Institute of
Public Finance and Policy will provide technical
assistance. |
Allahabad Bank opens boutiques CHANDIGARH, Jan 7
—Allahabad Bank today opened 57 retail banking
boutiques throughout the country. One such boutique was
opened at the bank’s branch in Sector 34-A by Mr
P.N. Rattan, General Manager, Corporate. It has
hand-picked 57 young bright officers and given them power
to sanction car, consumer, housing and personal loans on
the spot. The boutiques will concentrate on four products
— car finance, consumer finance, housing loan and
personal loans all under one roof. |
Banks urged to follow RBI
norms on NPAs CHANDIGARH, Jan 7 — The Northern India Federation of Industrial and Commercial Undertakings, Ludhiana, has urged banks to implement the RBI scheme announced recently. The banks were not forthcoming to follow the guidelines. RBI has reportedly asked banks to settle the NPAs of the small scale sector by allowing the borrowers to pay the principal plus 10 per cent simple interest from the day one when the account goes sticky. Mr Ramesh Inder Singh,
Secretary Industries, Punjab, had convened a meeting of
all nationalised banks along with an RBI representative
where the issue was taken up. The banks were directed to
follow the RBI guidelines and settle NPAs of the small
scale sector. |
Industry takes up ST issue NEW DELHI, Jan 7 (PTI) — Industry leaders today asked the government to do away with the surcharge on corporate and personal income tax and urged for a cut in interest rates for pulling the country out of recessionary trends. In a pre-Budget interaction with Yashwant Sinha, they expressed displeasure over the manner in which the uniform sales tax had been implemented by various states. “Almost all
industrialists took up the issue of uniform sales tax, as
the average rates have gone up across the country”,
CII President Rahul Bajaj told reporters after the
meeting. |
Bullion Forex HFCL BILT “We would increase our stake from 25 per cent to 35 per cent this year and would also control the management of phoenix,” BILT Managing Director Gautam Thapar told PTI. Power sector PHDCCI President K.S. Mehta has called for restructuring of the power sector and introduction of transparent mechanism to link payment with the supply of power. This is possible by
integrating generation projects with distribution. To
begin with, the distribution of power cities like Delhi,
Kanpur, Agra and Jaipur should be handed over on a
long-term basis to good private companies. |
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