Bonds
Govt plans tax-free bonds to bankroll education
NEFC will develop higher-education infrastructure across India
The government is planning to launch tax-free education development bonds and taxable term deposits to create a corpus for the National Education Finance Corporation (NEFC), which will use the money to develop higher-education infrastructure across the country. A brainchild of the human resources development ministry, NEFC will be set up with an equity capital of Rs 5,500 crore. The ministry proposes to infuse Rs 3,000 crore into the company every year through the bonds and take the corpus to Rs 35,500 crore by 2020.
While NEFC will directly issue the bonds, it will also allow banks to sell them for a commission. The bonds will have a maturity between 5 and 10 years. These would include tax-free zero-coupon instruments with a tenure of 10 years. Like a government security, these would be issued at a discount to face value or the maturity price. Also being considered are mortgage-based and receivables-based or securitised bonds. A set of shorter-tenure bonds, with a maturity of 3-5 years and carrying an interest rate of 5% are also being considered, government sources said. These bonds may offer investors some cover from capital gains tax. The government is also working on launching pension bonds, sources said.
Source : http://digital.dnaindia.com/
Source : www.insuremagic.com
