National

Karat for regulating FIIs

BHUBANESWAR: With bourses continuing to be volatile for a week now, Communist Party of India (Marxist) general secretary Prakash Karat on Saturday called for regulating Foreign Institutional Investors (FIIs) through imposition of taxes.

Delivering a memorial lecture to mark birth centenary celebration of communist leader Bhagabati Panigrahi, Mr. Karat the market was crashing due to excessive dependency on FIIs. The Centre should immediately impose security transaction tax and reintroduce long term capital gains tax, he said .

“If a foreign investor keeps investments in the country for more than one year, it would certainly make profit. So why can’t the investor be made to pay tax,” he questioned.

Till now, India and China had largely been unaffected in global slowdown as there were certain restrictive regulations in place, he said adding that the situation would worsen if the regulatory mechanism was liberalised favouring FIIs.

Addressing a press conference here, he also demanded details of Indian Space Research Organisation launching a spy satellite of Israel should be made public. “We cannot understand, why we are helping a country by launching its satellite which is meant to spy on other countries?” Mr. Karat asked.

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