Data recap: Tax mop-up, Blackstone’s investment

livemint.com:

Mint in the week gone by. The Centre’s tax collections finally got back on track in August and September, while private equity firm Blackstone Group Inc is making an entry into India's healthcare sector by acquiring controlling stakes in Care Hospitals and Kims Health. After facing a slow pace in the first four months of the fiscal year, the central government’s gross tax collections have started showing healthier trends since August.

While the 95.2% year-on-year growth in August was an outlier, the robust 15.9% increase in September gives a sense that the uptick is here to stay. This was mainly driven by direct tax collections. In the first half of the current financial year, tax mop-up has been 49% of the budgeted estimates, which suggests the government is on track to meet its aim set in the Budget.

The government is likely to cut import duties on foreign electric vehicles priced below $40,000 as they gain popularity in the country, Mint reported. All completely built-up (CBUs) vehicles priced below $40,000 now face an import duty of 70%, but the new policy could reduce it to 15-30% for EVs priced up to $25,000-35,000, officials said. While this could prove helpful to Elon Musk’s Tesla, which is looking to set a foothold in India, the concession may come with a clause of setting up local manufacturing for such products.

$1 billion: That’s the amount of the multi-layered deal that private equity firm Blackstone Group Inc. has struck to acquire controlling stakes in Care Hospitals and Kims Health. This is the firm’s first investment in the Indian healthcare sector.