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Business Recorder
3 days ago
- Business
- Business Recorder
Cash withdrawals from banks: FBR proposes raise in WHT for non-filers
ISLAMABAD: The Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) has proposed to raise withholding tax on cash withdrawal from the banks by non-filers from 0.6 percent to 1.2 percent to generate additional revenue during 2025-26. Sources told Business Recorder that the proposal is part of the government's policy to penalise non-filers of income tax returns. However, the government is also trying to impose financial restrictions on non-filers of income tax returns from July 1, 2025. Under the proposal, the government will abolish the category of non-filers and 'ineligible persons' would not be able to carryout any kind of financial transactions. The National Assembly Standing Committee on Finance and Revenue, had adopted the report on Tax Laws (Amendment) Bill, 2024 to impose restriction on economic transactions of non-filers through Finance Bill 2025-26 from next fiscal year. From July 1, 2025, the government will impose strict restriction on economic transactions of non-filers through the next Finance Bill. FBR will now share income tax returns data with banks Sources said that the government may not abolish all withholding taxes for non-filers in one go due to revenue implications. Therefore, the doubling of withholding tax rates on cash withdrawal from the banks by non-filers is also under consideration. Presently, over Rs 50,000 cash withdrawals by non-filers, in a single day, through credit cards/ATMs is also be subjected to 0.6 percent withholding tax. The Finance Act 2023 had reintroduced tax collection on cash withdrawals from Non-ATL persons by banks. The section 231AB requires every banking company to deduct advance adjustable tax at 0.6 percent from a person whose name is not appearing in the Active Taxpayer List, at the time of making payment for sum total of cash withdrawal (aggregate cash withdrawal) in a single day exceeding Rs 50,000. Cash withdrawals made on credit cards or from ATMs were also be covered by this provision. If the aggregate of cash amount withdrawn in a single day exceeds Rs 50,000, the tax is required to be deducted on the entire amount of cash withdrawn. Copyright Business Recorder, 2025
IOL News
25-05-2025
- Politics
- IOL News
Workers of Africa: The Unfinished Struggle for Liberation
Kenyan Nairobi, 2024-06-24. Protesters confronting a police officer during a protest against Kenya's new Finance Bill in Nairobi on June 24, 2024. Africa's workers face a coordinated attack by capital, both local and global, backed by the IMF, the World Bank, and complicit elites who have abandoned the very people they once claimed to serve, says the writer. Image: AFP Mbuso Ngubane AFRICA Day is not a day for celebration in the narrow sense. It is a day of remembrance, reflection, and recommitment. We do not mark the birth of the Organisation of African Unity on the 25th of May 1963 with song and dance alone. We mark it with struggle. The very idea of Africa's unity, and its promise of liberation, has always rested on the backs, and in the hands, of its workers. Not just those who labour in mines and factories, but also those who clean homes, till the soil, sew clothes, raise children, and build roads. It is working-class men and women, those who carry the continent's burdens daily, who have borne the cost of empire, and it is they who have carried the fight for freedom across generations. Africa's liberation has never been the product of state declarations or elite negotiation. It has always been forged in protest, in strike, in sweat, and often in blood. When Ghana rose under Nkrumah, it was the strikes of railway and cocoa workers that shook the colonial economy. In South Africa, it was not the ballot box alone that broke apartheid. It was the power of the organised working class, from the 1973 Durban strikes to the formation of militant unions like the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa. The same can be said of Guinea-Bissau under Amílcar Cabral, where the peasantry and rural workers were central to building a people's war. Cabral was clear: 'Tell no lies, claim no easy victories.' And we must now also be clear. Africa is not yet free. The great betrayal of African independence was that while flags changed and national anthems were composed, the economic system remained intact. The colonial economy, rooted in extraction and exploitation, continued to thrive. This time under African managers, but still under the same logic of capital. Workers remained landless, poor, and expendable. Their voices were marginalised in the very nations they had helped to liberate. As Thomas Sankara warned, political independence without economic justice is merely the illusion of freedom. Sankara, a revolutionary of rare honesty and vision, called for a break with neo-colonialism, for land redistribution, for women's emancipation, for a new economic order rooted in self-reliance. He was murdered by the very forces that feared what might happen if workers truly led. And today, we must ask: what has changed? In South Africa, nearly 50% of young people are unemployed. Women continue to carry the burden of unpaid reproductive labour, while also surviving on precarious wages in the care and retail sectors. Miners die underground, farm workers live in shacks, domestic workers are denied basic protections, and informal traders are harassed and criminalised. The economy remains colonial in structure. It exports raw materials, imports manufactured goods and services for the profits of capitalists while communities go hungry. This is not transformation. It is continued dispossession. The same conditions exist across much of the continent. In Nigeria, oil workers face mass retrenchments while the profits are repatriated to multinational giants. In the DRC, children dig for cobalt with their bare hands, fuelling a so-called green economy that has no place for them. In Kenya and Uganda, trade union leaders are imprisoned or assassinated. In Morocco and Tunisia, workers organising for dignity are crushed under anti-terror laws. From the Sahel to the Cape, Africa's workers face a coordinated attack by capital, both local and global, backed by the IMF, the World Bank, and complicit elites who have abandoned the very people they once claimed to serve. But this is not just a story of defeat. New fires are burning on the continent. In Mali and Burkina Faso, led by figures like Assimi Goïta and Ibrahim Traoré, there is a rebellion against the dominance of France and the plunder of our resources. These processes are complex, often contradictory, and we must watch them with both hope and clarity. But what cannot be denied is that something long suppressed, is now stirring. A Pan-African consciousness is resurfacing. Not from orchestrated summits or high-level dialogues, but from the lived experiences of those whose hands sustain our economies. It is returning through the organised defiance of farmworkers resisting landlessness, through the daily calculations of informal traders navigating criminalisation and debt, and through the collective frustration of unemployed youth with no future promised to them. It is shaped not in abstractions, but in concrete material struggle. What we are seeing is not a spectacle. It is a substance, and it cannot be ignored. On this Africa Day, we must reject the empty symbolism of liberation without transformation. We must say clearly that the project of African unity is meaningless if it does not speak to the daily struggles of working people. Africa will not be saved by billion-dollar infrastructure deals, or by a new scramble for lithium and rare earths. It will be saved by the transformation of our societies along the lines of justice, equity, and people's power. That re-organisation begins with workers. Those who produce value, who build nations, who raise the next generation. The trade union movement on the continent must rise to this occasion. We must rebuild our solidarity across borders. We must reject the legal straightjackets imposed on our organising. We must stop relying on state patronage and return to the grassroots, to the workplaces, to the streets. Unions cannot be junior partners in capitalist development. We must be the voice of an alternative future. We must also be honest about our failures: where we have been co-opted, where we have ignored women's struggles, where we have failed to adapt to the realities of the informal and unemployed. A movement that cannot renew itself cannot lead.
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Business Standard
23-05-2025
- Business
- Business Standard
Six-member board to regulate payment systems: RBI notification
RBI governor headed a six-member Payments Regulatory Board, including three central government nominees, will regulate and supervise payment systems in the country, according to a central bank notification. The Payments Regulatory Board (PRB) will replace the Board for Regulation and Supervision of Payment and Settlement System (BPSS). The five-member BPSS is also headed by the RBI Governor but does not include any government nominee. The other members are a deputy government concerned and three directors from the Central Board of the Reserve Bank of India. The Reserve Bank has now notified 'Payments Regulatory Board Regulations, 2025'. According to the notification, other members of the governor-headed Payments Regulatory Board (PRB) will be the Deputy Governor in charge of the Payment and Settlement Systems, one officer of the RBI to be nominated by the Central Board, and three persons nominated by the central government. RBI Governor, Deputy Governor and the central bank official will function as "ex officio" members of the Board. It further said the PRB may invite persons with experience in the fields of payment and settlement systems, information technology, and law to attend its meeting either as permanent or ad hoc invitees and the Principal Legal Adviser of the RBI shall be a permanent invitee to the meetings. The Payments Regulatory Board shall ordinarily meet at least twice a year, the notification said. Earlier, the government had set up an inter-ministerial committee headed by the economic affairs secretary to finalise amendments to the Payment and Settlement Systems Act, 2007. In its draft report, the panel suggested the creation of an independent regulator Payments Regulatory Board to deal with payments-related issues. The Reserve Bank of India, in October 2018, released its 'Dissent Note' on the Inter-Ministerial Committee for the finalisation of Amendments to the Payment and Settlement Systems Act, objecting to the panel's recommendation of having a regulator for payment systems outside the RBI. "The Payments Regulatory Board (PRB) must remain with the Reserve Bank and be headed by the Governor, Reserve Bank of India. It may comprise 3 members nominated by the Government and RBI, respectively, with a casting vote for the Governor to ensure smooth operations of the Board. The composition of the PRB is also not in conformity with the announcements made in the Finance Bill by the Honourable Finance Minister," the RBI's 'Dissent Note' had said. According to the notification, each member of the Board shall have one vote. "All matters for approval which come up during any meeting of the Board shall be decided by a majority of votes of the Members present and voting, and in the event of an equality of votes, the Chairperson, or in his absence, the Deputy Governor, who is a Member of the Board, shall have a second or casting vote," said the notification published on May 21 in The Gazette of India. Commenting on the notification, Ranadurjay Talukdar, Partner and Payments Sector Leader, EY India said: "India has never seen payments regulated outside of the RBI. RBI oversight over the years has ensured stringent governance of systemic risks arising from the payments ecosystem -- setting up appropriate guardrails to protect consumer interests (such as grievance redressal and KYC guidelines) and infrastructural resilience (such as the cybersecurity framework for PSOs)". However, the establishment of a PRB with the right industry representation can lead to greater innovation; whether by expanding tokenisation to enable device-based payments across schemes or by introducing newer entities like NUEs to balance ever-growing digital payments volumes, Talukdar said. (Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Time of India
23-05-2025
- Business
- Time of India
Six-member board to regulate payment systems: RBI notification
RBI governor headed a six-member Payments Regulatory Board, including three central government nominees, will regulate and supervise payment systems in the country, according to a central bank notification. The Payments Regulatory Board (PRB) will replace the Board for Regulation and Supervision of Payment and Settlement System (BPSS). The five-member BPSS is also headed by the RBI Governor but does not include any government nominee. The other members are a deputy government concerned and three directors from the Central Board of the Reserve Bank of India . The Reserve Bank has now notified 'Payments Regulatory Board Regulations, 2025'. According to the notification, other members of the governor-headed Payments Regulatory Board (PRB) will be the Deputy Governor in charge of the Payment and Settlement Systems, one officer of the RBI to be nominated by the Central Board, and three persons nominated by the central government. RBI Governor, Deputy Governor and the central bank official will function as "ex officio" members of the Board. Live Events It further said the PRB may invite persons with experience in the fields of payment and settlement systems, information technology, and law to attend its meeting either as permanent or ad hoc invitees and the Principal Legal Adviser of the RBI shall be a permanent invitee to the meetings. The Payments Regulatory Board shall ordinarily meet at least twice a year, the notification said. Earlier, the government had set up an inter-ministerial committee headed by the economic affairs secretary to finalise amendments to the Payment and Settlement Systems Act, 2007. In its draft report, the panel suggested the creation of an independent regulator Payments Regulatory Board to deal with payments-related issues. The Reserve Bank of India, in October 2018, released its ' Dissent Note ' on the Inter-Ministerial Committee for the finalisation of Amendments to the Payment and Settlement Systems Act, objecting to the panel's recommendation of having a regulator for payment systems outside the RBI. "The Payments Regulatory Board (PRB) must remain with the Reserve Bank and be headed by the Governor, Reserve Bank of India. It may comprise 3 members nominated by the Government and RBI, respectively, with a casting vote for the Governor to ensure smooth operations of the Board. The composition of the PRB is also not in conformity with the announcements made in the Finance Bill by the Honourable Finance Minister," the RBI's 'Dissent Note' had said. According to the notification, each member of the Board shall have one vote. "All matters for approval which come up during any meeting of the Board shall be decided by a majority of votes of the Members present and voting, and in the event of an equality of votes, the Chairperson, or in his absence, the Deputy Governor, who is a Member of the Board, shall have a second or casting vote," said the notification published on May 21 in The Gazette of India. Commenting on the notification, Ranadurjay Talukdar, Partner and Payments Sector Leader, EY India said: "India has never seen payments regulated outside of the RBI. RBI oversight over the years has ensured stringent governance of systemic risks arising from the payments ecosystem -- setting up appropriate guardrails to protect consumer interests (such as grievance redressal and KYC guidelines) and infrastructural resilience (such as the cybersecurity framework for PSOs)". However, the establishment of a PRB with the right industry representation can lead to greater innovation; whether by expanding tokenisation to enable device-based payments across schemes or by introducing newer entities like NUEs to balance ever-growing digital payments volumes, Talukdar said.
Irish Times
13-05-2025
- Business
- Irish Times
Banks obliged to retain ATMs under legislation passed by Seanad
Legislation to oblige banks to provide ATMs in certain areas, guaranteeing access to cash infrastructure, particularly in rural areas, has been passed by the Seanad and now goes to the President for consideration. The Finance (Provision of Access to Cash Infrastructure) Bill was introduced in the wake of concerns that increasing numbers of ATMs were being removed following a decline in cash usage. Passed last month by the Dáil, the legislation aims to protect the role of cash in Irish society and in the economy in the future. The Bill was published last year by then minister for finance Michael McGrath, who said that 'in the absence of a legislative intervention, it is likely that over time we would see more and more ATMs removed from communities across the country and I do not want to see this happen'. The Bill gives the Central Bank powers to address issues affecting those accessing cash, including oversight to ensure ATMs are properly maintained and that the 'out of service' experience of consumers is kept to a minimum. READ MORE The legislation was prompted by a recommendation made by the Department of Finance's Retail Banking Review, published in November 2022, which highlighted the importance of cash to ensure people did not suffer financial exclusion. The review stated that cash is needed as a safety blanket in case of power outages in electronic payment or cyberattacks. [ Letter to the Editor: The dangers of a cashless society Opens in new window ] The Bill requires a set minimum number of ATMs per 100,000 people and imposes certain obligations on the three main banks. Fine Gael Senator Seán Kyne said Storm Éowyn demonstrated that cash was 'absolutely vital' when 'the system shut down and shops didn't have access to the till'. His party colleague, Senator Cathal Byrne, said 'ATMs should be modernised 'and move with the times' to allow people to withdraw cash through contactless with Apple Pay and Google. He also said that ATMs should all have the facility to allow for lodgements as well, as businesses did not want to keep cash on their premises overnight. Aontú Senator Sarah O'Reilly said 'that for some, particularly older people, cash is simply what they know and trust. [ Keep accepting cash payments, Michael McGrath tells public bodies Opens in new window ] 'For others working on irregular incomes, cash provides a tangible way to manage budgets, and for victims of domestic violence, having access to and control over cash can be a crucial lifeline to autonomy and safety.' Minister of State Seán Canney told Senators that as of December 2022, there were 4,218 ATMs in operation in a 'good spread' across the country. He said the objectives of the Bill is 'to ensure sufficient and effective access to cash' and to 'provide a framework to manage future changes in cash infrastructure in a fair equitable and transparent manner'. He pointed out that a review would be undertaken if there was more than 15 per cent drop in cash demand in a calendar year. Central Bank data showed that cash withdrawals declined by 9.69 per cent from June 2023 to 2024.
