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Otago Daily Times
28-05-2025
- Business
- Otago Daily Times
Rates rise of 9.79% splits council
Waitaki District Council's longest-serving councillor has been left annoyed and frustrated with fellow councillors' inability find further ways of reducing rates bills. At a meeting of the Waitaki District Council this week, councillors agreed a rates rise, from next year, of 9.79%. Cr Jim Hopkins was not impressed with the outcome of what was the final chance to make meaningful reductions before the long-term plan is finally adopted in June. ''No-one wants to spend 9%-plus on rates but none of you want to actually take a dollar off the bill — crying out loud.'' The Oamaru Freezer Building was a concern. Cr Hopkins had suggested the building be gifted to Heritage New Zealand to be looked after by the nation, rather than ratepayers having to pay $250,000 to keep it up to safety standards. His suggestion that the $80,000 planned to pay for demolition of aviaries at the Oamaru Public Gardens be saved by offering the work as a free project to a community group was also turned down by councillors. ''I would just say to my colleagues around the table that what you have decided in terms of the discussions previously and even today, is that every dollar, of every line item, on every page, is absolutely of essential importance and cannot be reduced or forsaken,'' Cr Hopkins said. ''I think that's untenable. ''There are discretionary items in the pages we've looked at that could and should be reconsidered and I stand by the points I've made. ''I'm disappointed the elected members won't accept the principle that if, as has been asserted by a Crown agency, the Oamaru Freezer Building is a building of national importance, there is no justification for 13,000 ratepayers to put the total cost of its upkeep.'' The council did manage to agree to a reduction of $100,000 in the budget which will have a further small reduction of about one or two tenths of a percent. While not as big as the 10.3% rise the council originally consulted on in March, councillors have approved a proposed rates strike for its 2025-34 Long Term Plan, which will be adopted by the council in June. Once adopted the plan will see rates rise 9.79% in 2026, then a rise of 6.5% the following year. Rates will then be reduced from that benchmark by 16.11% in the third year of the plan, as water services are transferred to a yet-to-be-confirmed water entity that will charge ratepayers separately for services. Following that, rate rises will remain below 4% for the following seven years. ''This has been an extremely difficult process as we juggled with many conflicting priorities, against a background of affordability challenges for our community,'' Waitaki District Mayor Gary Kircher said. ''We've been working on this long-term plan for around 20 months and a lot of work has gone in to reducing cost for the ratepayer. ''We started in late-2023 with a rates rise of 26% and pulled it down to 13.73%. ''Even then, cost pressures saw the draft budget increase to 16%. ''We've managed to get it down to 9.79%, which is still more than anyone would like.''
Time of India
22-04-2025
- Business
- Time of India
SBI lowers FD rates to 6.9%; Debt mutual funds steal the spotlight with over 118 outperformers
State Bank of India ( SBI ), India's largest public sector bank, has revised its Fixed Deposit (FD) interest rates, to 6.9% from 7%, effective April 15, 2025, as per its official website. The bank has reduced rates by 10 basis points on select medium-term deposits, particularly those with tenures ranging from 1 to 3 years. FDs with maturities between 2 years and less than 3 years will now earn 6.90% interest, down from the previous 7.00% which is still lower than what is offered by around 118 debt mutual funds during the same period. ETMutualFunds analysed the performance of debt mutual funds in three years and found that these funds offered annualised returns ranging between 7% to 14.3%, higher than 6.9% being offered by SBI FD. Play Video Pause Skip Backward Skip Forward Unmute Current Time 0:00 / Duration 0:00 Loaded : 0% 0:00 Stream Type LIVE Seek to live, currently behind live LIVE Remaining Time - 0:00 1x Playback Rate Chapters Chapters Descriptions descriptions off , selected Captions captions settings , opens captions settings dialog captions off , selected Audio Track Picture-in-Picture Fullscreen This is a modal window. Beginning of dialog window. Escape will cancel and close the window. 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Protect Your Family with ₹1 Cr Life Cover ICICI Pru Life Insurance Plan Get Quote Undo Also Read | MF Tracker: This largest midcap mutual fund outshines across horizons. Will the streak continue? SBI FD interest rates For a tenure of one year to less than 2 years, the interest rate has been revised to 7.20% from 7.30%. In two years to less than 3 years, the revised interest rate offered is 7.40% against 7.50% earlier. Live Events FD-beating debt mutual funds Four debt mutual funds gave double-digit returns in the last three years. Aditya Birla SL Medium Term Plan gave the highest return of 14.3% in the last three years, followed by two credit risk funds. DSP Credit Risk Fund and Aditya Birla SL Credit Risk Fund gave 13.9% and 10.6% respectively in the said time period. UTI Medium to Long Duration Fund gave a return of 10.1% in the same time period. Also Read | 78% smallcap mutual funds outperform their benchmarks in one year. Have you invested in any for your portfolio? SBI Magnum Gilt Fund gave a return of 8.6% in the mentioned period. Two constant maturity funds - ICICI Pru Constant Maturity Gilt Fund and SBI Magnum Constant Maturity Fund - gave 8.5% each in the last three years. Two government security based funds from DSP Mutual Fund - DSP Gilt Fund and DSP 10Y G-Sec Fund - gave 8.3% each in the said time period. SBI Magnum Income Fund and SBI Credit Risk Fund delivered a return of 7.6% each in the last three years. Nippon India Income Fund and Nippon India Credit Risk Fund gave 7.5% return each in the similar time frame. Baroda BNP Paribas Ultra Short Duration Fund and Sundaram Money Market Fund gave 7% return each in the said period. Underperformers Around 170 debt mutual funds have failed to beat the fixed deposit interest rate offered by SBI. These funds gave returns ranging between 5.4% to 6.9% in the said time period. Sundaram Short Duration Fund gave 6.9% and Franklin India ST Income Plan gave the lowest return of 5.4% in the mentioned time period. FD vs debt funds Now coming to the comparison between fixed deposits and debt mutual funds, fixed deposits are considered low risk investments as they offer a guaranteed return for the predetermined period whereas debt mutual funds have a slightly higher risk associated with them because of the interest rate movement. Also Read | Looking for mutual fund with highest returns? Radhika Gupta warns of broken metric The second point of difference comes on the taxation part. The investment in tax-saving fixed deposits is exempted under Section 80 C of the Income Tax Act whereas for the debt mutual funds there is no such exemption. But both fixed deposits and debt mutual funds are classified under the same asset class. We considered all debt categories such as gilt fund, long duration, medium to long duration, gilt fund - constant maturity 10 year, credit risk funds, liquid funds , money market funds , overnight funds, corporate bond fund, dynamic bond fund, floating rate bond, banking and PSU funds, medium duration, low duration, short duration funds. We excluded debt based target maturity funds. We considered regular and growth options. We calculated returns for three years. We calculated CAGR returns as in debt mutual funds, returns up to one year are annualised and above one year are CAGR. Note, one should not make investment or redemption decisions based on the above exercise. One should always consider risk profile, investment horizon and goal before making investment decisions. ( Disclaimer : Recommendations, suggestions, views and opinions given by the experts are their own. These do not represent the views of The Economic Times) If you have any mutual fund queries, message on ET Mutual Funds on Facebook/Twitter. We will get it answered by our panel of experts. Do share your questions on ETMFqueries@ alongwith your age, risk profile, and Twitter handle.
