Minister of Finance of India 2020, Ms.Nirmala Sitharaman held the press conference today to pronounce relaxations to the services rendered by the nation including financial, customs and related to corporate affairs during distress caused by COVID 19.
The Minister stretched the custom clearance into 24*7 till 30th of June, 2020 along with the due date for issuing of notice, notification, approval order, sanction order, filing of appeal, furnishing applications, reports, any other documents etc., till 30th June which was earlier expiring in between 20th March, 2020 to 29th June, 2020.
It was declared that there will not be any charges for withdrawing of cash from any other Bank’s ATM by the debit cardholders for next 3 months. Furthermore, the trade finance consumers will now have reduced bank charges for digital trade transactions.
Due to the emerging financial distress faced by most companies on account of the large-scale economic distress caused by COVID 19, the affirmation was made that there shall be no additional charges for late filing of return, statement etc., during moratorium period i.e 1st of April to 30th September which is required to be filed in the MCA-21 Registry. Therefore, it reduces the burden of compliance for LLP’s at large and enables the non- compliance companies to make a fresh start.
In continuation with, if the Independent Directors of the company are not able to hold even one meeting for the year 2019-20, it shall not be considered as the violation of the Schedule 4 of the Companies Act, 2013. The Audits Report Order 2020 is now postponed and shall be applicable now from the year 2020-2021 instead 2019-2020.
Thereafter, composure is now with the newly incorporated companies as additional 6 more months is allowed to them for filing of declaration for commencement of their business. The Ministry of finance has now decided to raise the threshold of default under section 4 of the IBC 2016 to Rs 1 crore from the existing threshold of Rs 1 lakh. In addition, with the Finance Ministry may suspend section 7, 9 and 10 of IBC 2016 for a period of 6 months if the present circumstances continues beyond 30th April, 2020 in order to stop companies at large from being forced into insolvency proceedings in such force majeure causes of default.
-Pulkit Atal