Indian Economy News & Discussion - Nov 27 2017

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Rahulsidhu
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Re: Indian Economy News & Discussion - Nov 27 2017

Post by Rahulsidhu »

India’s central bank is reviewing the framework behind monetary policy decision-making as pressure builds on authorities to do more to revive a slowing economy.

“Internally we are reviewing, we are analyzing how MPC framework has worked” since it’s been in operation, Reserve Bank of India Governor Shaktikanta Das told reporters in New Delhi on Saturday. “If required we will have a discussion and a dialog with the government.”
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles ... ctiveness

This is great news and comes not a minute too soon. Practical experience trumps theory.
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Re: Indian Economy News & Discussion - Nov 27 2017

Post by kumarn »

tandav wrote: As of date there is a huge number of folks who should have been able to bill very large amounts to their clients but can't since they would need to pay GST and there is no way to ensure they get paid. Tax should not be collected unless vendor is paid.
I can vouch for this. Huge problem.
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Re: Indian Economy News & Discussion - Nov 27 2017

Post by Jay »

{Deleted. If you want to yell and scream , just go outside and do it. Having to clean up after mindless ranting is a misuse of admin time.}
Last edited by Suraj on 18 Feb 2020 10:18, edited 3 times in total.
Reason: Poster needs a pillow or punching bag to vent upon.
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Re: Indian Economy News & Discussion - Nov 27 2017

Post by Mort Walker »

Industrial output is contracting. Can all of this be attributed to a screwed up GST and bank lending rules?
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Re: Indian Economy News & Discussion - Nov 27 2017

Post by arshyam »

Mort Walker wrote:Industrial output is contracting.
Interesting, given the latest PMI numbers. Is there any other data source that indicates this?
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Re: Indian Economy News & Discussion - Nov 27 2017

Post by Mort Walker »

The last figure I saw was from 12 FEB 2020 which stated -0.3% contraction for industrial production - presumably the data is from GoI. Note this is not PMI.

Image
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Re: Indian Economy News & Discussion - Nov 27 2017

Post by Rahulsidhu »

As far as I can tell, the govt. defaulting on payments is due to fiscal deficit targets (compounded by low tax collections). If true, this means:
1) The real economy has been sacrificed at the altar of textbook economics. Sad.
2) Payments should start flowing once the new FY starts (i.e. April onwards).

Hence my prediction that second half of '20 should be much better.
Last edited by Suraj on 18 Feb 2020 10:20, edited 1 time in total.
Reason: Cleaned up earlier rant quoted
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Re: Indian Economy News & Discussion - Nov 27 2017

Post by Rahulsidhu »

Mort Walker wrote:Industrial output is contracting. Can all of this be attributed to a screwed up GST and bank lending rules?
I would say it is due to muted demand, which leads to lower production, leads to lower incomes, leads to lower demand. A downward spiral.
However, I do think we are beginning to break out of this already. But then events like the Vodafone-Idea debacle may end up prolonging the downturn.
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Re: Indian Economy News & Discussion - Nov 27 2017

Post by Suraj »

The quoted IIP data is from December.

I find it very interesting that a weighted basket based index with a base year (CPI and IIP) have stopped corresponding to a monthly up/down survey based index like PMI. Uttam quoted Services and Manufacturing PMI data in the previous page, and December is in the middle of a 3-4 month ramp up in PMI for both manufacturing and services.

PMI ideally should indicate momentum well since it's an up-down metric. A weighted index *should* show a corresponding rise in the common parameters as long as the index is set up properly. However, if an index uses some production stats as a proxy for the wider industry, it will fail to accurately track growth.

I find myself more inclined to look at PMI than IIP/CPI figures these days.
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Re: Indian Economy News & Discussion - Nov 27 2017

Post by Suraj »

Significant further rise in forex reserves in just 2 weeks:
India forex reserves soar to record $473 billion
Since data is from a week prior, we're probably almost on par with Taiwan now, if not overtaken them already, and soon to catch up with #5 KSA in a month or two.
Suraj wrote:Foreign exchange reserves up $4.5 billion to new lifetime high of $467 billion

India is in #7 position on the list of countries by forex reserves. Top 3 are China, Japan and Switzerland. Then comes (all figures US$ billion):

Code: Select all

4	 Russia	      558,900
5	 Saudi Arabia	488,254
6	 Taiwan	      478,130
7	 India	       466,693
8	 Hong Kong      434,200
9	 South Korea	 408,800
10	 Brazil	     356,884
11	 Singapore	  276,795
Not too far away from $500 billion and the #5 spot.
Meanwhile PIB's foreign trade figures from April-January 2020:
India's Foreign Trade: Jan 2020
Image
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Re: Indian Economy News & Discussion - Nov 27 2017

Post by nandakumar »

Suraj wrote:Significant further rise in forex reserves in just 2 weeks:
India forex reserves soar to record $473 billion
Since data is from a week prior, we're probably almost on par with Taiwan now, if not overtaken them already, and soon to catch up with #5 KSA in a month or two.
Suraj wrote:Foreign exchange reserves up $4.5 billion to new lifetime high of $467 billion

India is in #7 position on the list of countries by forex reserves. Top 3 are China, Japan and Switzerland. Then comes (all figures US$ billion):

Code: Select all

4	 Russia	      558,900
5	 Saudi Arabia	488,254
6	 Taiwan	      478,130
7	 India	       466,693
8	 Hong Kong      434,200
9	 South Korea	 408,800
10	 Brazil	     356,884
11	 Singapore	  276,795
Not too far away from $500 billion and the #5 spot.
Meanwhile PIB's foreign trade figures from April-January 2020:
India's Foreign Trade: Jan 2020
Image
Throw in the inwards remittance plus other personal transfers which for the first half was a net inflow of $38 billion and extrapolate for the period October to January on a pro rate basis at another $ 26 billion we might actually be current account surplus.
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Re: Indian Economy News & Discussion - Nov 27 2017

Post by Suraj »

Yes, with the drop in merchandise imports and the merchandise trade deficit, combined with strong growth in services exports (probably ~$220 billion for the year) and services trade surplus, and we may end up with a surplus for the year. The continued expansion of the forex reserves from $400B to $475B in the past year with a range bound Rupee-$ rate indicates a continuous inflow that the RBI is sterilizing to keep the Rupee from appreciating to the mid/low 60s or even more.
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Re: Indian Economy News & Discussion - Nov 27 2017

Post by VinodTK »

India to harvest record rice, wheat crops
MUMBAI/NEW DELHI (Reuters) - India is expected to produce a record 106.21 million tonnes of wheat this year, the farm ministry said, as favourable weather conditions helped to improve crop yields, with output far exceeding demand and further boosting stocks at grain bins.

Wheat output in India, the world's second-biggest producer, is expected to go up by 2.5% in the crop year to June 2020, the farm ministry said in its second crop forecast for 2019/20.

Rice output in the world's biggest exporter and No. 2 producer is estimated to rise by 0.9% to 117.47 million tonnes.

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Re: Indian Economy News & Discussion - Nov 27 2017

Post by vijayk »

https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/ma ... 168786.cms
India Inc on the cusp of a turnaround in revenue, Q3 profit surges over 36%
Analysts believe the broader revenue trend may start improving from the first quarter of FY21
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Re: Indian Economy News & Discussion - Nov 27 2017

Post by Nikhil T »

Swaminathan Aiyar: Why fiscal stimulus has failed to lift the Indian economy
India is going through its slowest three-year growth period since the Asian Financial crisis. GDP growth is now estimated at 6.1% in 2018-19, 5% in 2019-20, and (according to the IMF) 5.8% in 2020-21. Is India trapped in a new 5-6% growth groove?

Some critics accuse finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman of gross fiscal conservatism and failure to use a big budget stimulus to boost growth. Others have congratulated her for fiscal prudence.

This is a debate in fantasyland, lost in smoke and mirrors. The full extent of government spending beyond its revenue — what economists call the fiscal deficit — is far greater than what the budget admits. The combined deficits of the central and state governments are high enough to have caused financial meltdown in most countries.

India’s problem is not insufficient budget stimulus. Rather, budgets have provided a huge stimulus (cloaked by budgetary fictions) for three years in a row, and yet GDP growth has kept slowing. The failure of such a huge stimulus to stoke growth is deeply worrying. It suggests India’s structural problems are too deep to be stimulated away.

The Financial Responsibility and Budget Management Act of 2003 proposed reducing the central fiscal deficit to 3% by 2008 to check the runaway rise in public debt. The economic boom of 2003-08 produced so much revenue that the target looked achievable. But after the Great Recession of 2008 the economy and revenue growth slowed. Rather than come clean, successive governments fudged budget figures to pretend that they were on the path to cutting the deficit to the 3% target.

The Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) blew the lid on this. He revealed that budgets were understating the fiscal deficit, which was closer to 5.5% of GDP than the official 3.5%. He showed that instead of borrowing itself, the government was raising loans through government-owned companies. A second trick was to cloak the true deficit by postponing payments due in one year to the next. So, said the CAG, far from being prudent the government was on a hidden spending spree.

State governments have used the same tricks. Formally, the states have a combined fiscal deficit of 2.5% of GDP, which with the Centre’s 3.5% adds up to a consolidated 6%, second highest in the world. But if we look through the accounting tricks, the full deficit is perhaps 7.5-8% of GDP, making India a world champion in fiscal profligacy.

A big fiscal stimulus can be justified if it finances infrastructure that yields long term returns. However, the CAG has shown that the fiscal deficit is not only huge but mostly wasted in revenue spending. Besides, infrastructure projects take years to plan, get clearances and acquire land. Infrastructure spending cannot be boosted quickly. Land acquisition has stalled two dedicated rail freight corridors planned 15 years ago. Ditto for the proposed Mumbai-Ahmedabad bullet train and giant oil refinery at Ratnagiri.

Exports have stagnated for six years. Without booming exports no country has sustained miracle growth of 7%.
Compared with its Asian rivals. India’s costs are too high for land, capital, labour, electricity, freight and other logistics. The World Bank says the turnaround logistical time in India is double Bangladesh’s and triple China’s. India must tackle every high-cost area to become competitive, and this cannot be done overnight. The risk is that India will remain in the 5-6% slow-growth groove for some time.

Many optimists will disagree. They think the slowdown is a blip that will soon go away. One analyst says India has embarked on major reforms like the Goods and Services Tax that in the short run will kill small businesses but will accelerate growth in the long run; that the attack on black money and Real Estate Reform Act will cause much short term pain but eventually clean up and dynamise real estate; that the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code has been hamstrung by procedural delays but will soon yield major gains. In this view, tough but essential reforms have produced a temporary dip, which will soon be followed by a sharp growth upsurge, in a J-curve.

To me, the continuation of 5-6% growth seems more plausible in the immediate future. But even if the J-curve thesis proves right, that will be a triumph of structural reform, not of a budget stimulus.

India is in deep fiscal trouble. Do not get misled by dubious budget statistics. For many years, budgets have provided a big hidden stimulus, yet that has not revived growth. Let us abandon that failed approach and focus on structural reforms that will pay off with a lag.
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Re: Indian Economy News & Discussion - Nov 27 2017

Post by Suraj »

I agree with Aiyar regarding his argument that there are a lot of unbudgeted shadow and hidden deficits. But here's the thing - everyone does that. China is REALLY good at this. The Japanese have plenty of unaccounted for debt, and so does the US and UK, beyond their stated official debt/GDP measures.

On the second question of exports being stagnant, this is true only if you look at merchandise exports. Gross exports have risen sharply, driven by years of strong services exports that are now the 6th or 7th largest in the world, at an estimated $220-225 billion for fiscal 2019-20 . Considering merchandise exports are about $310-320 billion, services exports are already at ~70% of merchandise exports by value. Overall export growth has not been static, as a result - over the past 6 year period, exports are up approx 25% from ~$440 billion to ~$560 billion.

I agree with the argument that further structural reforms are necessary. Aiyar doesn't make any recommendations at all, and that is a glaring weakness of that article.
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Re: Indian Economy News & Discussion - Nov 27 2017

Post by Nikhil T »

I agree - the exports are not as bad as they are made out to be, because of services export. But he's also right that merchandise exports are also key to achieve growth above 7%.

Our merchandise exports were $328B in 2014 and are $332B in 2019 - that's no growth at all in 6 years. As a country with millions entering the workforce every year, we simply cannot afford flat growth in goods export. And this is a structural problem that needs readdress if we are to get back on the 7-8% growth trajectory.
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Re: Indian Economy News & Discussion - Nov 27 2017

Post by Suraj »

Yes, merchandise export business is correlated with greater workforce engagement. However, strong services export growth means significant wealth generation with very little investment, generating substantial tax revenues without the need for sustained investment into it. That is an economic booster since huge gains are coming at much lower infrastructure and policy cost. That doesn't really help unless the gains are well invested. The new National Infrastructure Pipeline policy is a step in that direction. Infrastructure is a very labour and capital intensive area, with long term gains.
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Re: Indian Economy News & Discussion - Nov 27 2017

Post by arshyam »

Suraj wrote:Aiyar doesn't make any recommendations at all, and that is a glaring weakness of that article.
This is glaring weaknesses of most articles these days. No one seems to know what needs to be done. Just saying "structural reforms, structural reforms" like some sort of mantra is not going to fix things either.

One more question: we were always a consumption based economy, and no one complained about 8% growth earlier, when exports were at no great level either. So clearly, consumption can also drive growth, not only exports (which is the east Asian model Aiyar refers). So is our underlying problem one of demand only, that as demand picks up, slowly the wheels will start turning elsewhere? (this has been my reading of the situation and I expect the coming FY to be the break-out year, but I am no economics expert, hence the q)
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Re: Indian Economy News & Discussion - Nov 27 2017

Post by yensoy »

I was thinking earlier today that Modi should be the Communists' best friend.

After all, the whole premise of Communism is that Capital is in the hands of a few. That is the reality of society. How can we bring Capital, i.e. means of production into more people's hands? One of the options, especially applicable to small & medium enterprises, is through low priced bank loans. This government (starting from 2014) has used the tectonic shifts in the world economy to clean up the Indian economy as well, in particular by bringing down the interest rates. With lower rates come affordability of Capital. At least in theory.

Communists should be praising Modi for making Capital accessible to more Indians at affordable rates, and lowering the class divide.

Then I woke up.
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Re: Indian Economy News & Discussion - Nov 27 2017

Post by Suraj »

If we're going to discuss the matter, I urge focus on economics - any derailment WILL result in the entire set of posts disappearing, with potential action against posters.

Modi is not a Communist's best friend. In my opinion, he's a social democrat, along the line of Sweden's Tage Erlander. He believes the state has a strong role to play in ensuring that the citizenry has access to basic RKM needs, but that beyond that level, society is best supported by encouraging entrepreneural and business initiatives.

Communism emphasizes state control over means of production , and the allocation of resources. That's quite far removed from anything this administration has ever done. The closest India came to communism was during the autarkic years prior to liberalisation.
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Re: Indian Economy News & Discussion - Nov 27 2017

Post by Nikhil T »

arshyam wrote:
Suraj wrote:Aiyar doesn't make any recommendations at all, and that is a glaring weakness of that article.
This is glaring weaknesses of most articles these days. No one seems to know what needs to be done. Just saying "structural reforms, structural reforms" like some sort of mantra is not going to fix things either.
Good point. How about we compile a list? And please let's not bring in political biases here.

Here's a few from me:
1. Remove controls in Public Sector to enhance productivity (source, source )
One of the central issues in India is the size and inefficiency of the public sector. State-owned companies monopolize the lion’s share of household financial savings and then deploy them incredibly inefficiently. Government-owned banks, which comprise over 70 per cent of India’s banking sector, constantly misallocate capital because of priorities foisted on them by politicians.

Some public companies -- such as those in telecom and aviation -- are supported by the federal budget for years while making losses, rendering it difficult for private players in their sector to survive. Others -- in oil and insurance -- are protected by statute and serve essentially as ways to funnel consumers’ cash to the government budget instead of into productive investment.
The government has flaunted its performance in the World Bank’s ‘Ease of Doing Business’ ranking to prove its commitment to reforming the economy. But India’s performance in the ‘Index of Economic Freedom’ ranking (129 out of 180 countries), which cannot be easily influenced by cosmetic changes to a few laws, should be of concern. The ranking, which measures the degree to which an economy is market-oriented, also classifies India as a “mostly unfree” economy.
2. Sell off non-strategic PSUs to private investors raise money for public investment in education, healthcare
Flows from above. There's no reason that a typist in PSU makes ~Rs 1 lakh a month when private sector would pay 1/5th of that. Retain strategic PSUs, but sell the remaining to private sector, so we can better lives for the public. Air India and many small banks are no longer strategic. In addition to raising a one-time windfall, this will free up massive amount of money from our yearly budgets that currently support Air India and the dozens of perennially sick PSUs.

3. Undertake land and labour reforms to unshackle the Private Sector and generate jobs
The recent corporate tax cuts and the push on Make in India is a good step to incentivize greenfield Private Sector investment. However, entrepreneurs struggle with obtaining land and labour without resorting to illegal practices. Zone land proactively for industrial and commercial use. Crack down on illegal diversion of land, which then threatens the investments by entrepreneurs that followed the law.

4. Raise farmer incomes to supplement rural demand
Unlike in other countries, farmers in India are subject to tremendous variance every year - unpredictable rainfall, erratic food prices, inefficient procurement/logistics/transport. Investing in sustainable micro-irrigation projects (e.g. check dams), promoting better crop mix, and simplifying logistics to bring produce to market will stabilize farmer incomes.
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Re: Indian Economy News & Discussion - Nov 27 2017

Post by Kaivalya »

https://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/art ... ure-goals/
At some level, the growth rate is an irrelevant number,” said Alok Kshirsagar, senior partner at consulting firm McKinsey, who leads its risk practice in Asia. He noted that “we obsess about” the growth rate and listed three metrics that matter. The first is the pace of private and public investment, particularly investment in terms of actual capital expenditure and capital formation. The second is the pace of growth in new income and job opportunities, such as the employment created by e-commerce platforms in food delivery or taxi hailing, he said. The third is the growth in per capita income, which is rising, according to government data.
Toll plazas offer a sense of the informal economy, noted Pathak, whose company operates 33 toll plazas across the country. “From the end of October onwards, the traffic numbers reveal that the worst is behind us,” he said. He noted that the formal corporate sector accounts for barely 14% of the Indian economy, and that most of India’s economic activity happens in the informal sector.
After India won independence [in 1947], it took 60 years to get to the first trillion dollars,” said Sujay Bose, CEO of the National Infrastructure Investment Fund. “The next trillion took 10 years and then from $2 trillion to $2.9 trillion took roughly three years. Now, in five years to do $2 trillion more is not out of whack; it can be done.”
Read what the economists say but focus on what investors are doing. The largest and savviest investors in the world are allocating more and more of their capital to one, infrastructure, and two, to India. Forty percent of the largest investors in the world are saying that their top allocation of exposure is going to be for the infrastructure sector, and almost all the large institutional investors who operate outside the OECD countries have India as one of the top destinations of capital.”
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Re: Indian Economy News & Discussion - Nov 27 2017

Post by Vips »

Exports from SEZs hit $100 billion mark.

Special Economic Zones (SEZs) are helping the country to push exports by achieving 100-billion-dollar worth of exports in FY 2019-20 (as of 17 February 202) despite the volatility of the global economy.

SEZs in India have shown resilience and have achieved this land-mark 100-billion-dollar worth of exports in the first 10-1/2 months of the fiscal, which is equivalent to the exports from SEZs for the full 2018-19 financial year.

It is observed that while the services segment, constituting majorly of IT and ITeS services was driver of SEZ exports with a growth of 23.69 per cent. Exports from the manufacturing SEZ Units grew nearly 4 per cent, which reflect overall expansion and interest in SEZs in the country.

The number of operational SEZs have grown to 241 as against 235 at the end of FY 2018-19.

Important sectors that saw healthy growth in the currents financial year include gems and Jewellery (13.3 per cent), trading and logistics (35 per cent), leather and footwear (15 per cent), non-conventional energy (47 per cent), textiles and garments (17.6 per cent). While petrochemicals constitute a major segment of SEZ exports, growth, however, was muted in this segment; which may be attributed to softening of global crude prices.
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Re: Indian Economy News & Discussion - Nov 27 2017

Post by tandav »

I have been harping on property tax. The next big govt revenue source is to increase property tax and reduce stamp duty. Whatever stamp duty was paid can be taken as input credit for property tax. Property/Land Tax of 1% of circle rate /year should improve revenue and productivity.
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Re: Indian Economy News & Discussion - Nov 27 2017

Post by g.sarkar »

https://www.news18.com/news/india/over- ... 09945.html
Over 3,000 Tonne Gold Mine Found in UP's Sonbhadra, 5 Times That of India's Reserves
The UP government has started the process for allocation of blocks where gold is said to be found.
Qazi Faraz Ahmad, February 21, 2020

Lucknow: The Uttar Pradesh government is preparing to auction tonnes of gold reserve found in Sonbhadra district of the state. As per reports of Geological Survey of India and Uttar Pradesh Directorate of Geology and Mining, the estimated gold is said to be around 3,000 tonnes at Son Pahadi and Hardi village area.
The UP government has started the process for allocation of blocks where gold is said to be found. A large reserve of gold has been confirmed in Hardi village in Kone region and Son Pahadi in Mahuli region. The government has also constituted a seven-member team for auctioning of these blocks through e-tendering process. The team will be geo-tagging the entire region and will submit its report to the Directorate of Geology and Mining, Lucknow by February 22.
As per the official letter of the Uttar Pradesh Directorate of Geology and Mining, 2,943.26 tonnes of gold reserve is said to be at Son Pahadi while 646.15 kilograms of gold is said to be at Hardi block. As per the World Gold Council, India currently has 626 tonnes of gold reserves. The new reserves are almost five times that amount and estimated at Rs 12 lakh crore.
.....
Gautam
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Re: Indian Economy News & Discussion - Nov 27 2017

Post by sudarshan »

^ The current biggest gold mine in the world is the South Deep mine in South Africa.

https://www.mining-technology.com/featu ... th-africa/

Its reserves are stated (in the above link) as 32.8 Moz of gold, as of 2018. This works out to around 930 tons of gold (an ounce being ~28 grams).

If the above news about Sonbhadra (that would be such an appropriate name as well) is true, then the Sonbhadra find would be not just 5 times India's reserves, but also 3 times larger than the current biggest gold mine in the world. Is that really the case? Hope it's not DDM at work. One link said the gold ore at Sonbhadra was estimated to be 3350 tons. Is this different from the actual amount of recoverable gold in the mine?
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Re: Indian Economy News & Discussion - Nov 27 2017

Post by JTull »

Admins, not sure if this is the right thread, so please move if you deem so. Thx

India lists 38 drug raw materials for which it wants to end dependence on China
The Modi government has drawn up a list of 38 drug raw materials that it wants locally produced in a bid to end the country’s dependence on Chinese imports for them, ThePrint learnt.

In an hour-long meeting chaired by Amitabh Kant, CEO of think-tank NITI Aayog Wednesday, the government has asked leaders of the Indian pharmaceutical industry to boost the manufacturing of these raw materials, which are scientifically called active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs).

The APIs, also known as bulk drugs, are the key raw material used for manufacturing medicines. For instance, paracetamol is the API for Crocin.

“The government’s apex body, the Central Drug Standards Control Organisation (CDSCO) has prepared a list of 38 essential APIs where India needs to be self-dependent. The government has informed us about the list but has not circulated it yet,” said V.V. Krishna Reddy, national president, Bulk Drug Manufacturers Association (BDMA) who was part of the meeting. “However, it is still a suggestion and not an imposition to start the production of these selected APIs.”

The list is likely to contain the fermentation process-based drugs such as crucial antibiotics penicillin, amoxicillin, ampicillin, tetracycline and essential vitamin and hormonal pills. It’s a market that China dominates across the globe.

Indian drugmakers import around 70 per cent of their total bulk drugs from China. In 2018-19 fiscal, the government had informed the Lok Sabha that the country’s firms imported bulk drugs and intermediates worth $2.4 billion from China.

In meeting, industry lists its difficulties
Wednesday’s meeting was attended by Sudhir Mehta of Torrent Pharmaceuticals, Pankaj Patel of Cadila Healthcare, Dilip Shanghvi of Sun Pharma and Satish Reddy of Dr. Reddy’s Laboratories among several other heads of Indian pharmaceutical companies.

In the hour-long meeting, the industry highlighted its difficulty in procuring environmental clearances and the need for tax concessions for re-starting the production of APIs.

“The objective of the meeting was to understand from the industry how the government can help to revive the production of APIs in India. The idea is to come up with a comprehensive policy on API production in India,” said a government official who was part of the meeting.

“We are already in talks with multiple ministries to facilitate the easy manufacturing of these products in India,” the official added.

The government has involved several ministries including the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change, Ministry of Commerce and Trade, Ministry of Health, Department of Pharmaceuticals and the Ministry of Finance to draw up the final policy to revive the production.

Lockdown in China
India is, however, likely to struggle with a shortage of APIs due to the shutdown of the Chinese market.

While several Indian drugmakers were well-stocked when the deadly coronavirus hit China, the industry might run out of the key ingredients by mid-March.

“Indian industry is so intertwined that it is impossible in our view to find a single player that would not be impacted by Chinese API shortages, should these materialise from post-mid-March,” said a paper titled India Pharmaceuticals: Coronavirus Impact and published by the Hong Kong-based equity research firm, Haitong International Securities Group.

In 2014, national security adviser (NSA) Ajit Doval had warned that “India runs the risk of a severe shortage of medicines because of its over-dependence on China for sourcing raw material for drugs”.
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Re: Indian Economy News & Discussion - Nov 27 2017

Post by rsingh »

I do not know where to put it. I am planning a maternity clinic in my ancestral village. Village is quite big and births are handled old way. I wonder if some brite has experience in this field. What will be cost for 4 bed maternity ward ? I have the land and will donate the functional ward to gram panchyat.
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Re: Indian Economy News & Discussion - Nov 27 2017

Post by Manish_Sharma »

https://www.huffingtonpost.in/entry/ind ... _1=2001824
Economy: India's Former Chief Statistician Debunks FM Nirmala Sitharaman's 'Green Shoots' Claim

|by Akshay Deshmane|

NEW DELHI—Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman’s claim in Lok Sabha last week that the Indian economy is not in trouble and that “green shoots” of recovery were visible is a “problem” and serious analysts should not use the expression, India’s former Chief Statistician Pronab Sen said in an interview with HuffPost India.

“Now, this is the problem. Any economic system will show volatility. This is the nature of economic systems. Things go up and down. If every time something goes up you say that’s a green shoot, then you have a problem. You actually have to look at the trend, not a one quarter or one month uptick,” he said.

“So you remember last time they were saying, “Oh! IIP is up, so we are good.” Well, IIP promptly went down the next month.”

Sen made the above comments a day after the Narendra Modi government released data pertaining to the Consumer Price Index (CPI) for January 2020 and Index of Industrial Production (IIP) for December 2019. While the CPI, or retail inflation, was the highest since May 2014 at 7.59%, the Index of Industrial production was at -0.3% for December 2019.

These numbers poured cold water on Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman’s claim, made just two days before in Lok Sabha, about “green shoots” for the economy.

According to Sen, who was previously the principal economic adviser to the then planning commission, what these numbers essentially show is that, there is a “supply side problem in agriculture which is pushing up prices and you have a demand side problem in manufacturing which is pushing down prices.”

In other words, poor supply of onions and garlic, as well as other crops, caused a spike in food prices which reflected in high consumer price index in January and poor demand for manufacturing goods, which led to a drop in their prices in December 2019. The poor demand, he further explained, is due to the ongoing economic slowdown.

The economic slowdown is persistent, Sen said, because there isn’t “enough agreement” about the “origins of the problem”.

“At the end of the day, any solution has to be based on your diagnosis of the origins of the problem. You have to attack it at the source. You cannot attack at the symptoms level,” he said.

Adding further, “You know, economics is not aspirin. It’s more like an antibiotic, you have to recognise the nature of the problem. Where does it originate and what can you do to address that? Now there is, I don’t think enough agreement on the origins of the problem. And that is where the real issue lies”.

Sen, who was appointed to lead a special standing committee on statistics in late December by the Narendra Modi government, has a two point solution for the ongoing economic slowdown: a) get cash back into the rural economy and b) stop demonising cash because that’s how rural India operates.

“I am all for formalisation and moving to non-cash. Provided you have systems in place and people are able to transact without using cash. Those systems are not in place today; not in rural India. Even in urban India, they are not,” he explained.

What do you make of the IIP and CPI numbers released by the government?

Well, you see, as far as the IIP is concerned, if you look at what has been happening for the last few months, it’s essentially hanging around zero. That’s what it suggests. If you take away the normal statistical discrepancies, zero seems to be a fairly reasonable way to go. Nothing much is happening. So basically it seems to be flat.

But why is that a satisfactory situation to be in for an economy like India?

No. Not in the least. It’s not a satisfactory situation.

The IIP growth doesn’t necessarily equal growth of value added in manufacturing. There are intervening variables like productivity increases, like differential movement in output and input prices, so all of those things have a role to play.

But nevertheless if we are talking about any kind of a reasonable growth in the economy, you would want to have manufacturing value added increasing somewhere around 7-8%. So what you would want for that to happen is that IIP should be growing somewhere around 4.5-5% at least. We are way below that. As I said, we are closer to 0%.

You also mentioned this one bit about the discrepancy between what the IIP numbers state and what the GDP numbers show.

You see, the GDP number is value added. The IIP is about physical production. Now the two are related, of course. But, you know, you can have 0% IIP growth and yet have positive value added growth through things, as I said, like productivity increases and differential price movements. But at the end of the day if you are thinking about employment, then what is critically important is what’s happening to volumes, which is what the IIP shows. It is not the GVA. GVA has absolutely nothing to do with employment, in fact GVA growth can be employment displacing as well. Yeah, so if you have labour saving technology coming in, that gives rise to productivity, then you can have positive GVA growth and employment going down. So employment is very closely linked to the IIP.

So will it be fair to say that this IIP number is a reflection of the poor state of employment generation?

It is a part of the same story.

And what do you make of the Consumer Price Index number—highest in five years—which made headlines? What’s being said is that it is so because of seasonal spike in vegetable prices (interrupted)

Well, it’s actually an unseasonal spike. Because what you had was very late monsoons which led to crop damage and so on. That is primarily the case, but if you look at the CPI data more carefully though CPI is not the appropriate price data to look at for these purposes; on manufacturing, the inflation is very, very low. So what you are getting is a supply side problem in agriculture which is pushing up prices and you have a demand side problem in manufacturing which is pushing down prices.

If you could simplify this for our readers, by referring to supply side problems in agriculture, you are essentially talking about the spike in prices of onion and garlic that we saw due to poor supply, right?

Yes, yeah; which then trickles into other crops as well.

But will it be right to understand that these were the primary crops that were most affected?

Yeah. It is, it is. One of the issues that one needs to be little careful about is that the reality is probably not as bad as what the CPI is showing simply because the CPI now is seriously outdated. The CPI is based on 2011-12 consumption patterns. Now we are 10 years down the road. So the CPI desperately needs to be revised. My sense would have been that, if past patterns continued to hold good, then the weight of food in the CPI basket would go down quite significantly. So the inflation would be much more moderate than what is being reported.

It’s too far away, over the course of practically a decade now, so the basket could have changed quite a lot, so the CPI may not be very representative.

But given that these numbers are for a period in which food inflation peaked, and it was essentially the main concern about the economy, within the available methods of calculation, it would still be fair to say that the number does capture to a great extent what was going on, right?

No, no, it does capture; but you know, the thing is that, remember, your entire monetary policy depends upon not just the direction but also the magnitude. So if the CPI is overstating inflation, then we may be doing less of a monetary expansion, than we should be.

Will the statistics committee that you head right now look at revising the base year and formula for calculating the Consumer Price Index?

For doing that we need to have the household consumption expenditure survey, that is where you get the CPI weights from. We had one in 2017-18 but the government has junked that. So now the next one is being planned for 2020-2021. It will be released sometime in 2022. We are quite far away from there.

So, in the interim period, we are basically working with imperfect or probably imprecise data. How would you characterise the present data that we are working with?

You have no choice but to continue with the old weights. We have no data to change the weights of the different commodities in the Consumer Price Index basket. Till that data becomes available, you just have to continue with the old ones.

So essentially, the numbers released point us in the right direction but you are not certain about the extent (interrupted)

The magnitude of inflation.

But you remain concerned about the inflation problem as such. Is that right?

Well, no. In fact, my concern is elsewhere. You see, when you have high food inflation, there are two things you need to be very conscious about.

The first is what will happen to non-food prices. Now, as far as non-food prices are concerned, manufacturing prices are trending down. They are not trending up. So there is a downward trend and, if things get worse, you could be slipping into deflationary territory, where inflation goes into the negative territory. That’s one thing you have to keep in mind so you have to look at non-food inflation as well and see what’s happening there.

What are the consequences on the economy in a real sense, not only the theoretical?

What happens if prices go into negative territory, then viability of industries gets jeopardised. Because when companies borrow money, they assume a particular level of inflation at which they can service their debt. If inflation is much lower than debt, particularly negative, then they have a hard time paying back.

The second thing you have to remember are commodities where households will actually divert income from other goods and services to keep their food consumption the same. You have a very low elasticity of demand so what happens with high food inflation is, by and large, demand for other goods and services goes down. So if you already have a demand deficiency for all other products, this will make it worse. That seems to be the situation. That is more worrying than the food inflation in itself, or the headline inflation for that matter.

This is interesting because, among some analysts, the word ‘stagflation’ seems to be frequently used to describe where the Indian economy could end up. But what you are talking about is a different argument.

So you don’t see any possibility of India facing stagflation.

You see, stagflation, by and large, is a situation where there is a growing demand deficiency and a cost push inflation. So the stagflation term actually originates, If you go into its etymology, it originates in the oil price shocks. Where commodity prices globally went up because of oil and demand contracted. In the 70s and again in the 90s.

I was asking also because wage growth is terrible.

Wage growth is terrible. So think of families having roughly constant incomes with food prices going up. So what will end up happening is that they will shift their consumption pattern to protect their food consumption and will cut down on other so-called discretionary components.

And there is a possibility that in the months of December and January, the most recent months for which data was released, something like this happened.

It could.

So that then nullifies or reduces the “green shoots” in the economy that Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman referred to, right?

Now, this is the problem. Any economic system will show volatility. This is the nature of economic systems. Things go up and down. If every time something goes up you say that’s a green shoot, then you have a problem. You actually have to look at the trend, not a one quarter or one month uptick. So you remember last time they were saying, “Oh! IIP is up, so we are good.” Well, IIP promptly went down the next month.

So the whole green shoot thing is only for talking. Serious analysts should not be saying green shoots. Because green shoots would be when you are saying overall, across-sector either things bottoming out or starting to turn up. If you are seeing components going down, worry.

Some analysts have said inflation may have bottomed out now. What do you think?

That is quite likely, unless some other disaster happens in the middle. Because the agricultural cycle, particularly for horticultural crops, is three to four months. And it’s been three to four months since food prices shot up. So there is a good chance that we have bottomed out of this or topped up, as the case may be.

So there is some cause for optimism then.

Yeah. But in order to get that, you have to track what is happening at the mandi level, which I don’t do. I am not sure they are doing it either.

I want to come back to the point you made about the manufacturing sector. You mentioned that, when you look at the data closely, you find that there are demand side problems pushing down prices. Could you elaborate?

As far as the manufacturing sector is concerned, incomes are not growing. Okay? Manufacturers are increasingly having a difficult time selling their product. So you are seeing large discounts happening. So that’s what is going on.

So that is a reflection of stagnant incomes, isn’t it?

Yeah, basically.

What can be done to revive income? Does the budget give us enough tools to revive incomes?

Not really. So far as I can make out, there has been no real push towards increasing demand in the budget.

The new personal income tax scheme announced by the finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman in the budget won’t help?

It’s very small. And how much benefit will actually accrue isn’t all that clear. Because much of it depends on how many people switch and how many people don’t switch to the new system. That’s not clear at all.

Also, it doesn’t address the source of the problem ie: rural India, right?

No, it doesn’t address the source of the problem.

So the problem of slowdown and stagnant incomes is going to persist with us for a while now.

Well, that’s what it looks like, yes.

What do you think should be done to address these stubbornly persistent problems?

At the end of the day, any solution has to be based on your diagnosis of the origins of the problem. You have to attack it at the source. You cannot attack at the symptoms level. You know, economics is not aspirin. It’s more like an antibiotic, you have to recognise the nature of the problem. Where does it originate and what can you do to address that? Now there is, I don’t think enough agreement on the origins of the problem. And that is where the real issue lies.

I could give you a long spiel on what I think is the origins of the problem, I am already on record, there is nothing new, if you google my writings, you will get it. But my sense of it is that the origins of the problem is rural distress, which started well before this government, started in 2012 or thereabouts, but got exacerbated by demonetisation. Now if that is the nature of the problem, you have to recognise that, till such time as systems are in place where non-cash transactions can happen in the rural economy, to discourage the use of cash is a self-defeating set of decisions. And this has been happening repeatedly. Cash has been demonised in the system.

That’s fine. I am all for formalisation and moving to non-cash. Provided you have systems in place and people are able to transact without using cash. Those systems are not in place today; not in rural India. Even in urban India they are not. So, at this moment, my thing would be: 1) please get cash back into the rural economy. 2) stop demonising cash because that’s how rural India operates. Until you have enough evidence that rural India has been able to move into a non-cash transaction mode, don’t do anything drastic.
Suraj
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Re: Indian Economy News & Discussion - Nov 27 2017

Post by Suraj »

sudarshan wrote:^ The current biggest gold mine in the world is the South Deep mine in South Africa.

https://www.mining-technology.com/featu ... th-africa/

Its reserves are stated (in the above link) as 32.8 Moz of gold, as of 2018. This works out to around 930 tons of gold (an ounce being ~28 grams).

If the above news about Sonbhadra (that would be such an appropriate name as well) is true, then the Sonbhadra find would be not just 5 times India's reserves, but also 3 times larger than the current biggest gold mine in the world. Is that really the case? Hope it's not DDM at work. One link said the gold ore at Sonbhadra was estimated to be 3350 tons. Is this different from the actual amount of recoverable gold in the mine?
It's being reported elsewhere , on Economic Times and other sites. The notional value of a deposit like this is around $200 billion, but recoverable gold is another matter. There's typically a gap between estimated reserves and economically recoverable amounts.

Just eliminating India's gold import bill for a few years or more would be a substantial benefit in itself. The annual gold import bill is $35 billion. Petroleum and gold accounts for our largest two consumption items in imports. Diamonds are a large import but the export value exceeds the import value so we have a net export gain there, which is not the case for gold.
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Re: Indian Economy News & Discussion - Nov 27 2017

Post by kit »

Suraj wrote:
sudarshan wrote:^ The current biggest gold mine in the world is the South Deep mine in South Africa.

https://www.mining-technology.com/featu ... th-africa/

Its reserves are stated (in the above link) as 32.8 Moz of gold, as of 2018. This works out to around 930 tons of gold (an ounce being ~28 grams).

If the above news about Sonbhadra (that would be such an appropriate name as well) is true, then the Sonbhadra find would be not just 5 times India's reserves, but also 3 times larger than the current biggest gold mine in the world. Is that really the case? Hope it's not DDM at work. One link said the gold ore at Sonbhadra was estimated to be 3350 tons. Is this different from the actual amount of recoverable gold in the mine?
It's being reported elsewhere , on Economic Times and other sites. The notional value of a deposit like this is around $200 billion, but recoverable gold is another matter. There's typically a gap between estimated reserves and economically recoverable amounts.

Just eliminating India's gold import bill for a few years or more would be a substantial benefit in itself. The annual gold import bill is $35 billion. Petroleum and gold accounts for our largest two consumption items in imports. Diamonds are a large import but the export value exceeds the import value so we have a net export gain there, which is not the case for gold.
if economically viable this is as good as finding a whole new oil field, maybe even better !
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Re: Indian Economy News & Discussion - Nov 27 2017

Post by g.sarkar »

India is importing between 800 to 900 tons of gold every year, depending on demand. At that rate, 3350 tons is not that huge an amount. But saving a billion here and a billion there, soon you have saved a serious amount. After the easy gold has been removed, India can use labor intensive methods, as labor is cheap and the price of gold is around $1600 per ounce. In California, you can still see old geezers panning for gold in streams and creeks and getting small amounts everyday.
Gautam
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Re: Indian Economy News & Discussion - Nov 27 2017

Post by nachiket »

g.sarkar wrote:India is importing between 800 to 900 tons of gold every year, depending on demand. At that rate, 3350 tons is not that huge an amount. But saving a billion here and a billion there, soon you have saved a serious amount.
That's what I thought as well. Our insanely high demand for gold means that even this huge find won't help a lot. But any amount of foreign exchange saved because of whatever gold we can extract from here will be useful.

Long term, the only solution is to give up our unhealthy fascination with gold. I always find it funny when people crib about the falling Rupee while buying copius amounts of gold because it keeps its value. If enough Indians stopped hoarding gold our trade deficit would reduce drastically and the Rupee might actually appreciate.
Suraj
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Re: Indian Economy News & Discussion - Nov 27 2017

Post by Suraj »

Annual gold production is about 2500-3000 tonnes worldwide. Largest producer is China, with ~400 tonnes, followed by Australia with 320 tonnes or so. South Africa is only about 140 tonnes. Further, all commodities should be viewed through the prism of marginal price - the presence of a new source of production depresses prices and lowers imports.

Meanwhile forex reserves keep rising:
Forex reserves scale new historic high of $476 billion
The country's foreign exchange reserves swelled by $3.091 billion to a lifetime high of $476.092 billion in the week to February 14, mainly due to a rise in foreign currency assets, according to the RBI data.
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Re: Indian Economy News & Discussion - Nov 27 2017

Post by Mort Walker »

nachiket wrote:
Long term, the only solution is to give up our unhealthy fascination with gold. I always find it funny when people crib about the falling Rupee while buying copius amounts of gold because it keeps its value. If enough Indians stopped hoarding gold our trade deficit would reduce drastically and the Rupee might actually appreciate.
It's not going to happen due to cultural usage. Secondly, it is a way of hiding wealth from tax collection and passing it to future generations, couple this with demonetization and inflation, and gold has its place. The RBI should let the Rupee move up instead of keeping it low to help exporters, and any future demonetization should be better thought out. Once the INR has high public confidence, which should be doable in 5 years, then the demand for gold will drop.
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Re: Indian Economy News & Discussion - Nov 27 2017

Post by Aditya_V »

Once we have have more real assets and our own Manufacturing and education levels go up. This obsession with gold will come down as people will participate in markets have other assets. Right now Gold and Rela estate ( which costs mind blowing amounts) are the only high return assets which people are investing in unlike US where a large chunk of the population is invested int he stock market and have a stake in the Industrial achievements of that country.
g.sarkar
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Re: Indian Economy News & Discussion - Nov 27 2017

Post by g.sarkar »

My grand mother, mother and aunts were obsessed with the possession of gold. Once they got their hands on it, they would not let it go. And they were not uneducated. I hope the current generation of young wives are obsessed with buying cars, houses and equipment for the house such as a fridge, furniture etc. This will help the economy, and this is the case with other middle income countries.
Gautam
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Re: Indian Economy News & Discussion - Nov 27 2017

Post by Paul »

Aditya_V wrote:...... unlike US where a large chunk of the population is invested int he stock market and have a stake in the Industrial achievements of that country.
Tell that to the 10s of millions who lost their savings in the 2001/2008 crash.

If 2020 COVID persists there is another crisis in the making. Gold to a major extent and Real estate to some extent is immune from this...
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Re: Indian Economy News & Discussion - Nov 27 2017

Post by Schmidt »

The gold estimate in UP seems to be a wild exaggeration. I got a copy of a press release by GSI ( which did not do this particular survey ) that says that the gold ore is estimated to be approx 55000 tonnes and the yield was around 3 grams per tonne , so the amount that could be extracted was around 160 kg
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