Sector exposure limits tightened; issuer and group concentration curbs imposed with mandatory trustee half yearly review and reporting.
The circular tightens concentration limits for debt schemes by reducing issuer-level investment limits with conditional board-approved extensions, revising sector exposure caps and introducing group-level exposure limits (with a board-approved increase mechanism), imposing rating and registration conditions for additional Housing Finance Company exposure, requiring half-yearly trustee review and confirmation of aggregate exposures, and making the revised rules immediately applicable to new schemes and fresh investments while existing open-ended schemes must comply within one year.

Information confidentiality from FIU-IND: requests must follow prescribed procedure, routed through Directorate, and source must remain undisclosed.
Requests for FIU-IND data must follow the prescribed procedure using specified Annexures signed by the Principal CIT and be routed through the Directorate; FIU-IND will not entertain direct field requests. Information from FIU-IND is confidential intelligence, must be protected from unauthorised use and dissemination, developed by departmental investigation, and the FIU-IND must not be identified as the source except when required by a competent court.

Procurement certificate issuance: pre authenticated PCs allowed without AC/DC countersignature, subject to bond coverage and eligibility.
Issuance of Procurement Certificate for duty free imports is delegated to the jurisdictional Superintendent, who must ensure consignments are covered by the bond. Chemical and textile units remain subject to issuance by Assistant/Deputy Commissioners. Eligible status holder or high turnover units with clean records may receive pre authenticated procurement certificates issued by Superintendents on direction of the Assistant/Deputy Commissioner; such pre authenticated PCs must not be sent for AC/DC countersignature. Inbond movement, examination, bonding and re warehousing procedures continue to apply.

Extension of warehousing period for bonded capital goods aligned with renewal of private bonded warehouse licences to avoid duplicate renewals.
At the time of renewal of the private bonded warehousing licence, the warehousing period of all capital goods installed or put into use shall be extended simultaneously so that further extension for any item falls due only on the next licence renewal; the extension term for each capital good must be adjusted accordingly and no single extension granted at renewal shall exceed the maximum permissible period.

Offer for Sale mechanism revised: retail bids deferred to next trading day while non retail bids may be carried forward.
Revision of the Offer for Sale mechanism reallocates bidding windows and settlement timing to encourage retail participation: sellers must notify exchanges by the day before the OFS; non retail bidders alone may bid on the opening day to determine the cut off price; retail investors bid on the next trading day with any retail discount applicable only to those bids; settlement for retail bids follows the normal post trade cycle. Non retail bidders may elect to carry forward and revise bids to the retail day, and unsubscribed retail shares are reallocated to such carried forward non retail bids at cut off price or higher.

Unaccompanied baggage EDI processing now mandates electronic Baggage Declaration, systemised examination and duty payment before release.
The ICES 1.5 EDI system is extended to Unaccompanied Baggage at Cochin and requires filing a revised Baggage Declaration Form at the Service Centre, payment of a nominal filing fee, verification and signature of a system-generated checklist, and receipt of a location slip from the port custodian to direct baggage to examination. Preventive Officers and the Superintendent will examine and assess entries; specified cases are escalated for assessment. After assessment the final BDF printout is used to pay customs duty and obtain an out-of-charge endorsement, following which the CFS issues gate passes and baggage is released after exit verification.

Initial assessment year: assessee's chosen first year governs ten consecutive years' deduction entitlement under section 80IA.
The term initial assessment year means the first assessment year opted for by the assessee for claiming the ten consecutive-year deduction; once opted, the assessee is entitled to claim deduction for ten consecutive years beginning from that chosen year, subject to statutory conditions, without exceeding the overall prescribed ceiling and with the claim period being continuous. Assessing officers must allow deduction accordingly after verifying conditions and refrain from pursuing litigation that treats the year of commencement as the initial assessment year contrary to this interpretation.

Confidentiality of FIU-IND information: requests must go through the Directorate and source disclosure is prohibited except by court order.
FIU-IND supplies bank-account and transaction intelligence to CBDT under the anti money laundering framework and an exchange MOU. Field requests for FIU-IND data must be routed through the Directorate of Income Tax (Recovery) with prescribed Annexures completed and signed by the Principal CIT; FIU-IND will not accept direct requests. Information is confidential intelligence, must be kept in strict custody, not identified as FIU-IND's source in departmental documents except under court compulsion, and should be further developed by the department's own investigation.

Rectification order service requirement: written orders must be issued and served on the taxpayer, not only reflected electronically.
The instruction notes that rectification orders effected on the AST system without providing a written copy leave taxpayers unaware and unable to pursue appeal or further rectification. It underscores that rectification must be issued in writing and directs that all rectification applications be disposed of by passing a written order that is duly served upon the taxpayer, not by mere AST system updates.

Time limit for amendment under section 154 requires authorities to decide rectification applications within prescribed six month period.
An application under section 154 to rectify a mistake apparent from the record must be disposed of by the Income tax authority by either making the amendment or refusing it within the prescribed time limit of six months; the time limit is mandatory, Assessing Officers must strictly follow it, and supervisory officers must monitor compliance and initiate administrative action for failures to adhere.

Recovery of drawback: exporters must submit BRCs or negative statements to enable Customs monitoring and recovery action.
The notice requires exporters to declare Authorised Dealers and to submit biannual Bank Realization Certificates or six monthly negative statements from ADs or statutory auditors for drawback shipping bills; the ICES BRC module will auto generate due dates, maintain pendency lists, permit three modes of BRC entry (specific BRCs, period negative statement, or listed pending S/Bs), and enable Customs to delete entries upon approval or recovery, thereby facilitating recovery action where export proceeds are not realized within the statutory period.

E-Commerce Zone established to centralize VAT compliance and registrations for online retailers across the National Capital Territory.
Establishment of an E-Commerce Zone and Ward No.300 to centralize VAT administration for e commerce companies: all existing registered e commerce persons will be transferred to Ward No.300 and future registrations processed there; the ward and zone cover the entire National Capital Territory of Delhi; the Commissioner, Trade & Taxes and VAT authorities under the DVAT Act, 2005 shall exercise all powers conferred by that Act and its rules; this measure complements the periodical return requirement for electronic shopping facilitators.

NOC requirement waived for factory-stuffed container BTT; exporters must notify jurisdictional excise/customs and provide acknowledgement.
The prior NOC requirement for Back to Town (BTT) of factory stuffed containers is dispensed with; exporters must intimate the jurisdictional Central Excise/Customs Commissionerates about such permissions and submit an acknowledged copy of that communication to the concerned AC/DC of Customs.

Service centre charges set maximum fees for EDI document digitisation and printing; vendor to collect applicable service tax.
M/s. XEAM Ventures Pvt. Ltd. assumed operation of JNCH service centres effective 01.10.2015 and a schedule of maximum charges governs services through the centres. The schedule sets fees for digitisation of manual documents and for remotely filed documents (including printing, amendment, query and checklist fees), distinguishes basic and additional item blocks, and provides page-based printing rates for remote filings. Prescribed charges exclude service tax, which the vendor will collect from trade.

Export promotion copy generation available at JNCH CMC Centre, enabling exporters and brokers to obtain shipping bill copies onsite.
On site generation of the Export Promotion Copy of shipping bills will be provided at the CMC Centre, JNCH for all categories of shipping bills as a trade facilitation measure; exporters and customs brokers may use the service and report any difficulties to the Additional/Joint Commissioner of Customs, Appraising Main (Export), JNCH. The facility builds on the existing arrangement for registration of shipping bills and issuance of Let Export Order for factory stuffed containers.

IEC documentation requirements: only PAN copy, bank certificate or pre printed cancelled cheque and applicant photograph required for applications.
Applicants for IEC must upload only a copy of the business PAN, either a cancelled cheque with the entity's pre printed name or a prescribed Bank Certificate, and the signatory applicant's photograph using the notified application format and checklist. Regional Authorities must accept manual applications only in the revised format, issue IECs per the checklist, process pending applications under old or new norms as appropriate, and allow applicants to furnish additional documents to meet the simplified requirements.

Drawback document submission required for affected shipping bills; final window opened, failure to comply will trigger recovery action.
Exporters with drawback EDI shipping bills dated 01.04.2013-31.03.2014 must submit competent-authority certificates or negative statements per CBEC instructions; IEC-wise lists of un-reconciled shipping bills are published on the customs website. A final submission window is provided until 24.02.2016 for those who missed the earlier 27.01.2016 deadline, and recovery action to recoup drawback amounts will be initiated against non-compliant exporters after the extended cut-off.

Issue of shares without cash: sweat equity and share issuance against owed payments permitted with FEMA and FDI compliance.
Permits issue of equity to non-residents without cash remittance where: (a) sweat equity schemes comply with SEBI rules for listed companies or the Companies (Share Capital and Debentures) Rules for others, and (b) shares are issued against legitimate payments owed where remittance does not require prior FEMA permission, subject to FDI policy, sectoral caps, pricing guidelines and applicable tax laws; AD Category I banks must notify constituents and refer to the relevant FEMA notifications.

Foreign currency account pooling for start ups enables repatriation of subsidiary receivables subject to RBI conditions.
An Indian start-up with an overseas subsidiary may open a foreign currency account abroad to pool export/sales receipts, and the overseas subsidiary may pool receivables from transactions with Indian residents and non residents into that account. Balances due to the Indian start-up must be repatriated to India within the period applicable to realisation of export proceeds. Start ups may use OPGSPs for realising subsidiary receivables or repatriation subject to an RBI permitted value cap, and must have appropriate contractual arrangements among the parties.

Foreign exchange reporting under FETERS moved to secure web-portal with revised purpose codes and online Form A2 submission.
FETERS reporting shifts from email to an RBI web-portal with supplied logins, downloadable Java/Excel validators, master-files, upload acknowledgements, two-fortnight file access, and RBI-authenticated revision of purpose codes and AD-master entries. ENC.TXT and SCH3-6.TXT reporting and their linked purpose codes are discontinued. LRS transactions must be reported under specific FETERS purpose codes matching the nature of the remittance rather than a single aggregated code; Form A2 is revised (LRS checkbox) and may be submitted online with initial per-transaction limits, subject to Authorised Dealer bank satisfaction and compliance by April 1, 2016.