Mumbai: Even as the banking sector reels under an unprecedented pile of bad loans that has restricted the ability of a number of banks to grow, non-banking finance companies (NBFC) have reported an improvement in most of their performance metrics.

A Financial Stability Report (FSR) released by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) on Tuesday noted that loan growth of the NBFC sector was at 16.6% for fiscal 2016, nearly double compared with the 8.8% growth in credit seen across the banking sector on an aggregate level.

The Income Tax department will establish over 60 facilitation centres – Aaykar Seva Kendras – this fiscal from Goalpara in Assam to Neemuch in MP as part of efforts to widen the taxpayer base and reach a maximum number of people who need help in doing business with the taxman.

The ASKs help a person in conducting their personal and business operation with the department ranging from obtaining a new Permanent Account Number (PAN) to filing Income Tax Returns (ITRs) apart from other income tax related subjects.

With nine months to go to complete the merger process involving its associates, State Bank of India (SBI) is working on details of the amalgamation proposal, which will be submitted to the government soon for approval.

The Cabinet earlier this month gave in-principle approval to merger of the five associate banks and Bhartiya Mahila Bank with the SBI.

Reliance Communications (RCom) will provide 4G to its CDMA customers for Rs 93 per 10 gigabytes in a promotional offer for 28 days, after which the regular tariffs will come into effect.

The one-time CDMA to 4G LTE upgrade offer from RCom needs a recharge of Rs 93, Rs 95 or Rs 97, depending on the telecom circle.

ITC has moved higher to its fresh 52-week high of Rs 365.15, up 2% on the BSE, ahead of 1:2 bonus issue. The stock will turn ex-bonus on Friday, July 1, 2016.

The board of directors of the company at its meeting held on May 20, 2016, had recommended the issue of bonus shares in the proportion of 1 (one) bonus share of Rs 1 each for every existing 2 (two) fully paid-up ordinary shares of Rs 1 each.

ONGC will have to bear a heavy loan repayment burden if it buys more than 50% equity stake in the Krishna Godavari (KG) basin deep-water block — KG-OSN-2001/3 — held by Gujarat government-owned GSPC. The debt burden, coupled with ONGC’s estimate that the high-pressure-high-temperature block off the east coast has far less than the presumed 7.6 trillion cubic feet (tcf) of natural gas, could mean that size of a potential deal between the two firms would be much lower than the reported $2-2.5 billion.

State-owned Indian Oil Corporation (IOC), Oil India (OIL) and Bharat PetroResources (BPRL), among themselves, will pay Russia’s Rosneft $3.3 billion for buying equity stakes in the latter’s two oil and gas projects in September, two officials privy to the deals told Siddhartha P Saikia in New Delhi.

In one of the deals, IOC, OIL and BPRL are picking up 29.9% in the Rosneft-operated Taas-Yuryakh oil and gas fields in East Siberia for $1.28 billion. Besides this, the consortium would fork out another $2.02 billion for 23.9% stake in Rosneft arm Vankorneft that runs the Vankor oil field in East Siberia, the sources added.

The government’s move to cap air fares to tier-II and tier-III cities at `2,500 is likely to further erode the

market share of the railways in passenger traffic. Once the reduced fares for air travel are put in place, there would be very little difference between premium rail fares and what airlines would charge to cover the same distance. Sections of customers could, therefore, shift from railways to airlines, given that the travel time is far lesser in case of the latter.

Ashok Leyland will look at exiting non-core areas to keep its growth momentum in FY17, Dheeraj G Hinduja, chairman of the company, has said. In an annual report just released, he said that portfolio rationalisation was already in process and that would see progressive exit from non-core and non-performing businesses.

A renewed thrust in international markets in the target clusters would be undertaken with products developed specifically for the identified markets. The capacity of the Ras-Al-Khaimah plant will be almost doubled this year.

Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) has issued a new circular clarifying that the Tax Collected at Source (TCS) levy will not be applicable, when cash part of the payment for certain goods or services is less than Rs 2 lakh, even when the total payment is more than this amount.

A fresh circular has been issued by the Board to clarify the issue with regard to applicability of the provisions to levy TCS, as announced in the Budget, where the sale consideration received is partly in cash and partly in cheque.

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