WASHINGTON: The U.S. Treasury Department has rejected the request of the Indian-American community to extend the deadline for the declaration of offshore accounts as of August 31 to December 31 and the reduction of penalties for non-disclosure.

"At this point, we do not contemplate the granting of an extension of time through-the-board for all taxpayers," the department said in response to a letter to the U.S. The Treasury secretary, Timothy Geithner, the Organization of People of Indian Origin (Gopi) in June.

GOPI Reject request for sentence reduction, said the 2011 Initiative offshore voluntary disclosure (OVDI) "provides a way for taxpayers with undeclared assets offshore to resolve their tax problems."

Referring to the allegation that the Gopi OVDI have not been published in ethnic newspapers and other media of the community in several languages, the Department said it had promoted OVDI knowledge through the publication of information in eight languages ​​OVDI such as Hindi, IRS.GOV.

"We have also published information through traditional media, both national and local and social media sites like Twitter. We will continue this outreach effort wide as the August 31, 2011, deadline nears" said.

The indigenous community groups, however, have decided to continue their efforts to reconsideration by the Treasury and the relief requested in a July 19 letter submitted to President Barack Obama said gopi.

Four organizations leading the movement Gopi, National Federation of Indian Americans (NFIA), American Association of Physicians of Indian Origin (AAPI) and Asian American Hotel Owners Association (AAHOA).

Kolkata: Biscuit maker Britannia Industries Ltd is weighing the option of partnering a global dairy company to strengthen its dairy business. Britannia earned Rs250 crore in revenue from its dairy business in fiscal 2011.

“We will be willing to consider, (an alliance) if we find a company that will add value to our dairy business,” Vinita Bali, Britannia’s managing director said at a press conference in Kolkata on Saturday.

Britannia, however, has no immediate plans of roping in a partner for its dairy business, she clarified.

Britannia’s promoters, the Wadia family had bought out French dairy firm Danone’s 25.5% stake in the Indian company in 2009 capping a two-year dispute over the Tiger brand.

Alongside, Britannia would consider consolidating its subsidiaries for “operational simplification”, its chairman Nusli N. Wadia said at the company’s annual general meeting on Saturday.

“We have too many subsidiaries and need to reduce them,” Wadia said

According to Britannia’s annual report for 2010-11, the company has some 18 subsidiaries.

Some of these are defunct investment companies, Bali said. “These companies have no relevance to us and may... get merged in order to simplify operations,” she added. More

MANILA, Philippines—The economy should pursue a development plan relying less on business process outsourcing (BPO), even if it has substantially boosted the services sector over the past decade, a ranking central bank official said.

BSP Deputy Governor Diwa Guinigundo said that while it has been prudent to generate more and more BPO investments for the sake of generating jobs and boosting income, the economy should pursue generating much more investments in industries such as manufacturing.

BPO investments, which are a type of non-equity mode (NEM) of investments, while easy to generate, are likewise easy to lose, according to Guinigundo.

Since companies could easily end contracts with outsourcing firms, jobs and income being generated by the BPO sector have been deemed less stable than those generated by industries.

“Let’s get more NEM investments, but let us create an environment where we can rely less on them and more on industries,” Guinigundo said.

He said this in agreement with comments from the World Investment Report 2011, launched on Tuesday, by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD).

According to the report, NEM investments have significantly contributed to the total foreign direct investments received by many developing countries like the Philippines.

The report said that in 2009, NEM investment activities worldwide generated about $2 trillion in revenues, adding that the figure for 2010 could be bigger.

“Cross-border NEM activity worldwide is significant and particularly important in developing countries. In most cases, NEMs are growing more rapidly than the industries in which they operate,” said the UNCTAD report.

The report also said, however, that while NEM investments have been helping drive economies of developing countries, heavy reliance on them carried risks.

“NEMs also pose risks for developing countries. Employment in contract manufacturing can be highly cyclical and easily displaced,” the report said.

The report also said some transnational companies might be outsourcing some of their job requirements to circumvent social and environmental standards.

The BPO sector, which includes the so-called sunshine industry that is the call-center subsector, has been credited for helping provide jobs over the past 10 years to offset weaker job generation in the past years by other sectors, such as manufacturing.

The Philippines last year surpassed India to become the world’s biggest call center player as more and more investments in the field were generated. More