Hyderabad: Telangana Chief Secretary Santhi Kumari on Wednesday held a meeting with officials and reviewed the progress achieved in realization of the state’s own tax and non-tax revenues.
Officials from commercial tax, excise, stamps and registration, transport, mining and other departments attended the meeting.
Chief Secretary directed the officials to focus on achieving the targets for this financial year. She asked them to take special measures to boost the tax collections and stated that weekly reviews will be held to ensure that the targets are achieved.
Commercial Tax, Registration and Excise Departments were asked to propose action plan to augment additional revenue.
The Telangana government has realized Rs 91,145 Crores in tax revenue collections and Rs 6996 Crores in non tax revenues resulting in a total of Rs 98,141 crores by the end of January 2023.
Inspector General, Registration and Stamps Rahul Bojja, Commissioner, Commercial Taxes Neetu Kumari Prasad, Special Secretary, Finance Ronald Rose, Director, Prohibition and Excise Sarfaraz Ahmed, Commissioner Transport Buddha Prakash Jyothi and other officials attended the meeting.
The EU’s energy war with Russia has entered a new phase — and there are signs that the Kremlin is starting to feel the pain.
As of Sunday, it is illegal to import petroleum products — those refined from crude oil, such as diesel, gasoline and naphtha — from Russia into the EU. That comes hot on the heels of the EU’s December ban on Russian seaborne crude oil.
Both measures are also linked to price caps imposed by the G7 club of rich democracies aimed at driving down the price that Russia gets for its oil and refined products without disrupting global energy markets.
Those actions appear to have bitten into the Kremlin’s budget in a way other economic penalties levied in retaliation for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine have not.
The Kremlin’s tax income from oil and gas in January was among its lowest monthly totals since the depths of COVID in 2020, according to Janis Kluge, senior associate at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs.
Kluge noted that while Russia’s 2023 budget anticipates 9 trillion rubles (€120 billion) in fossil fuel income, in January it earned only 425 billion rubles from oil and gas taxes, around half compared to the same month last year.
It’s only one month’s figures and the income does fluctuate, but Kluge called it “a bad start.”
Russia’s gas sales to Europe have also collapsed — in part as a result of Moscow’s own energy blackmail — with its share of imports declining from around 40 percent throughout 2021 to 13 percent for November 2022, according to the latest confirmed European Commission monthly figure.
But it’s oil that matters most to Kremlin coffers.
On Friday, EU countries struck a deal on two price caps which will come into full force later this year following a 55-day transition period. A cap of $100 will apply to “premium” oil products, including diesel, gasoline and kerosene. A cap of $45 will be enforced on “discount” products, such as fuel oil, naphtha and heating oil.
The EU ban and the G7 price caps are meant to work in tandem. While the EU bans Russian oil, cutting off a vital market, the price caps ensure that insurance and shipping firms based in the EU and other G7 countries aren’t completely blocked from facilitating the global trade in Russian oil. They still can, but it must be under the price caps. This way — so the theory goes — Russia’s fossil fuel revenue will take a hit without disrupting the global oil market in a way that could endanger supply and drive up the price for everyone.
Squeezing the Kremlin
Russia is selling more crude to China and India to make up for the lost trade with the EU | iStock
So far, EU leaders think, it’s working.
Buyers in China and India and other countries are hoovering up more Russian crude, making up for the lost trade with Europe. But knowing that Russia has few alternative markets, buyers have been able to drive down the price. “The discounts that Russia has to give, that its partners can demand, are strong and are here to stay,” said one senior European Commission official. Russian Urals crude is trading at around $50 per barrel, around $30 below the benchmark Brent crude price.
“I think in general the EU and the G7 can be quite happy with how things have unfolded with regards to the oil embargo and the price cap up to now,” said Kluge. “There has been no turbulence on global oil markets and at the same time Russia’s revenues have gone down considerably. The key reason here is that the price which Russia receives for its crude has gone down.”
The question is whether the EU can keep up the economic pressure on Russia without harming itself in the process.
So far, at least as far as oil is concerned, it’s been plain sailing. Oil markets have proved remarkably flexible since the EU’s crude ban in December, with export flows simply shifting: Asia now takes more Russian crude — often at a discount — while other producers in the Middle East and the U.S. step in to supply Europe.
So far, it is looking likely that a similar “reshuffle” of global trade will take place with oil products like diesel, said Claudio Galimberti, senior vice president of analysis at Rystad Energy.
The nature of the oil product sanctions means that there’s nothing to stop Russian crude from being exported to a third country, refined, and then re-exported to the EU, meaning that India and other countries are becoming more important oil product suppliers to the West.
China and India, as well as others in the Middle East and North Africa, also look likely to snap up Russian oil products that are no longer going straight into Europe, freeing up their own refining capacity to produce yet more product that they can sell into Europe and elsewhere.
“There is a reshuffle of product the same way there was a reshuffle of crude,” Galimberti said.
There could still be problems, however. “Europe is not going to import Russian diesel, so it needs to come from somewhere else,” Galimberti said, pointing to two major refineries in the Middle East — Kuwait’s Al-Zour and Saudi Arabia’s Jazan — upon which European supply will now be increasingly dependent.
“If you had a blip in one of these refineries you could see a price response in Europe,” said Galimberti. But for now, after a glut of imports in advance of Sunday’s ban, “inventories of distillates are full,” he added.
“Europe is in good shape.”
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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )
Cairo: The Central Bank of Egypt (CBE) said the country’s tourism revenues increased by 43.5 per cent to a record high of $4.1 billion in the first quarter of the fiscal year 2022-2023.
Egypt’s fiscal year begins at the beginning of July and ends at the end of June the following year, reports Xinhua news agency.
The number of tourists visiting Egypt from July to September last year rose by 52.2 per cent to 3.4 million, while the number of nights tourists spent in the country increased by 47.1 per cent to 43.6 million, the bank said in an official statement.
Over the past few years, Egypt’s tourism sector, a main source of national income and hard currency for the country, has been greatly affected by the country’s fight against terrorism, especially after a Russian plane crashed over the Sinai Peninsula in October 2015, killing all 224 passengers and crew on board.
With improving security conditions in Egypt, tourism gradually recovered in the following years to bring Egypt a record high of $13 billion in revenues in 2019, when more than 13 million tourists visited the North African country, before tourist numbers declined again because of the Covid-19 lockdowns.
The ongoing Russia-Ukraine war has also cast a shadow on the sector as the two countries have been among top sources of tourists to the country boasting many historic monuments.
Abdel Fattah al-Assi, a former assistant minister of tourism and antiquities for hotel facilities control, attributed the revival of the tourism industry to the incentives provided for foreign travel agencies and the country’s improved stability and security, among other factors.
“After the Covid-19 lockdowns, more people will spend their holidays abroad, and Egypt has many advantages for tourists as it enjoys a nice weather and offers reasonable prices (for tourists),” al-Assi told Xinhua.
The ongoing development in Egypt, such as better roads, less traffic and the renovation of most tourist destinations, will attrack more visitors, he noted.
Ankara: Turkey’s tourism revenues reached $46.28 billion in 2022, registering a year-on-year increase of 53.4 per cent, according to figures released by the Turkish Statistical Institute.
Nearly 44.56 million foreign tourists visited Turkey in 2022, an increase of 80.3 percent from a year earlier, according to figures released by Turkey’s Culture and Tourism Ministry on Tuesday.
Istanbul, Turkey’s largest city by population, was the top choice for foreign visitors, welcoming more than 16 million tourists in 2022, according to the Ministry as quoted by Xinhua news agency report.
