The Financial Express -- Expressions

This page contains Editorial and Op-Ed articles

Monday, November 10 1997

Letters to the Editor

The finer points of Rs 520 cr NHB fraud

The National Housing Bank had made payment drawing about nine cheques on different dates totalling about Rs 520 crore on the Reserve Bank of India in favour of ANZ Grindlays Bank. The cheques were marked account payee. There were no underlying transactions between the National Housing Bank and the ANZ Grindlays in respect of the above nine cheques.

Farmers should be taxed

While the spirit of liberalisation would demand withdrawal in phases of incentives and subsidies, the government has hardly moved in this direction. Rather, appeasement is the order of the day. In this context, one wonders why the union finance ministry wants to deprive tea companies of the benefit of deduction of a certain proportion of pre-tax profits in the event of its deployment for purposes of plantation activity.

Fleecing consumers and producers

After a lull of about two and a half years, the government has once again raised the price of natural gas. It has decided, in principle, to link basic price of domestic gas to international price of a basket of fuel oil (FO) and set the former at 55% of the latter during 1997-98, per cent in 1998-90 and per cent during 1999-2000.

Fleecing consumers and producers

The disinvestment disaster

So who goofed this time?

Farmers should be taxed

The finer points of Rs 520 cr NHB fraud