Re: Indian Economy News & Discussion - Nov 27 2017
Posted: 12 Jun 2018 22:02
Deleted. Please keep these to India-US thread. This isn't the place to dump it, pun intended.
Consortium of Indian Defence Websites
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Second, flowing from the above, India Inc.’s sense of disconcert has only worsened due to the ideological focus (read pro-poor) policies pursued in the last four years. Barring its failed attempt, in its first year in office, to rejig the land acquisition law in the country, the NDA under Modi has made social welfare and poverty alleviation the overarching focus of its policies. To be fair to them, it is not just good politics, but also something that should have been undertaken decades ago.
Given that this regime is the most right-of-centre government—in terms of their economic ideology too—this focus has disappointed India Inc.
They confide in private that they are being made to feel like second grade citizens; the disappointment is more pronounced because in 2014, a victorious Modi (inspired by his record in Gujarat) was perceived to be pro-business.
Third, linked to the above, India Inc. is particularly upset at the free rein given to investigative agencies targeting big-ticket corruption. Some high-profile cases, they believe, have been used to vilify the entire business community.
Further, the NDA’s anti-black money crusade topped by the demonetisation of high-value currencies has forced an unwelcome reset in their business model.
Fourth, promoters are, for the first time, insecure about their future. The successful launch of the debt tribunal is seeking an institutional solution to the vexing problem of bank loans that have turned toxic.
Yes, while banks are finding a way out of their bad debt crisis, existing promoters are being shown the door—something that is once again a bone of contention as far as promoters go.
Fifthly and finally, the decision to transition India to a rules-based regime (by implementing policies like goods and services tax (GST), debt tribunals, auction of natural resources, installing a regulator for the real estate and so on) has not gone down well with India Inc. most of whom have cut their teeth in an exception-based regime (honed by leveraging outdated concepts like the licensing regime pursued till 1991).
Indeed. The squeaking and squealing of this kind feels like Music to my ear. Mera Bharat Badal Raha hai.Suraj wrote:The livemint article is excellent news indeed .
India's current account deficit widened sharply to USD 13.0 billion in the fourth quarter of 2017-18, or 1.9 percent of GDP, from USD 2.6 billion, or 0.4 percent of GDP, in the same period of the previous fiscal year.
They had their chance to come clean and they ignored it. I hope all efforts to unearth black money stashes, benami properties in India and abroad will continue to be made even after 2019 by the new govt.Kashi wrote: And that because black money is becoming difficult to be laundered back into the economy, sick businesses are becoming difficult to revive!
Katare wrote:If GDP grows fast current account deficit would shoot up too in initial investment phase later exports would catch up to bring it down.
This rule of law for billionaire promoters who are loosing their family jwels would put fear of god on rest of them. This would improve discipline instead of reckless investment in upswing and public pays for NPAs in downswing routine that we have for last 70 years.
inital couple of years new change will have impact. old guard who thrived on loop holes will be wiped out and new generation of business will take lead. in my view future is much brighter.Kashi wrote:Jaggi's article in Swarajya today essentially echoes the above views. He is of the view that a stricter tax regime, IBC and NPA cleanup are squeezing the promoters out of their businesses, attempts at formalising the economy and transactions are stifling new investments. And that because black money is becoming difficult to be laundered back into the economy, sick businesses are becoming difficult to revive!
So doing the right things is now bad for the economy?
https://swarajyamag.com/politics/why-in ... sahi-vikas
---Generally speaking, sentiment has improved and so has the performance outlook.
From the demand perspective, they have started seeing traction.
Here are the fears, but yet to be realized: "From the systemic point of view, there are concerns — crude oil prices, interest rate outlook, and elections cycle. So there are macro factors — inflation management and how the monsoon will be, and support prices for various farm products. In addition, there could be fiscal slippage during the election year."
{Nevertheless} overall generally companies are more confident than they were in the past.
Capacity utilisation has started picking up
{This time round there will be no} significant overleveraging in the system.
With Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code in place, things are not going to be easy.
{Projects will be} qualitatively much better both in terms of kind of sponsors and structuring (financing) of projects.
Private sector banks have the capital, but they are going to be extremely selective in funding capital expenditure and large projects.
Industry trackers say that caution has set in after the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) and the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) came down heavily on auditors in cases of financial fraud. The auditor’s role was questioned in several cases and Sebi banned a network firm of PwC for two years from auditing listed firms.An audit partner recently discovered, in one of the assignments, that promoters were siphoning off money. “The promoters had exaggerated the cost of some of the investments done by them in the past few years. We resigned as the auditors as Rs 2 crore (charged as audit fees) is not worth the risk,” said the partner, who resigned from a BSE-listed company recently.
Pretty pessimistic attitude For a Chetak, your namesake ran on three legs to successfully save his master against terrible odds. Have some faith man, India’s big and messy so it takes time but it is on right path.chetak wrote:Katare wrote:If GDP grows fast current account deficit would shoot up too in initial investment phase later exports would catch up to bring it down.
This rule of law for billionaire promoters who are loosing their family jwels would put fear of god on rest of them. This would improve discipline instead of reckless investment in upswing and public pays for NPAs in downswing routine that we have for last 70 years.
Nothing is going to improve.
These guys will simply bide their time and try to undo the changes via the opportunity given them via the 2019 slugfest.
The opposition just cannot get their acts together without liberal doses of vitamin M so some funds will start to flow to them
Steel secretary: National Steel Policy saved Rs 50 bn forex, spiked crude capacity by 24MTThirteen states have reported an average 25 per cent decline in their fiscal deficit primarily due to a contraction in capital outlay, even though their revenue has gone up by 7.5 per cent in the fiscal year to March 2018, says a report.
However, in FY17, their revenue had gone up by 11.5 per cent, says a report by domestic credit rating agency Icra, based on the provisional fiscal data given by the CAG of 13 states.
Fiscal deficit of these 13 states sharply fell by 25.1 per cent to Rs 3.2 trillion in FY18 from Rs 4.3 trillion in FY17, partly on account of the contraction in capital spending.
"While the CAG data shows that these 13 states have seen a steep 25 per cent decline in their fiscal deficit in FY18, their aggregate revenue receipts rose 7.5 per cent, which is sharply lower from 11.5 per cent a year ago," Icra said in a weekend report.
According to the agency, this slowdown in revenue growth was led by a contraction in the non-tax revenue, comprising grants from the Centre and states' own non-tax revenues, and a mild slowdown in the pace of growth of tax revenue, comprising Central tax devolution and states' own-tax revenues.
But the agency estimates that the pace of growth of the aggregate tax revenue of 13 states improved to 10.1 per cent in FY18 from 7.7 per cent in FY17, as the CAG data is only provisional.
The pre-actuals for FY18 indicate that growth of aggregate revenue expenditure of these 13 states eased to 8.8 per cent from 13.1 per cent in FY2017, while the capital outlay contracted by 9.4 per cent in FY18 in contrast to the healthy growth of 17.1 per cent in FY17.
The rollout of new steel policy saved forex of Rs 50 billion since last year while around 24 million tonnes of crude steel capacity was added during past four years, Steel Secretary Aruna Sharma said.
India also replaced Japan as the second largest steel producer this year, she said.
"We are not going to stop here. We all know about the ambitious National Steel Policy (NSP) announced last year under which we have set a target of raising the capacity to 300 MT by 2030 and produce 250 MT of crude steel.
Steel production capacity has increased from 110 MT in 2014-15 to 134 MT in 2017-18, while 7 MT was added in 2017 alone, she outlined.
Much of the attention of the commentators, on this forum and outside, is focused on economic statistics like GDP, inflation and PMIs, but IMO what truly matters is whether industrial competitiveness is improving or degrading, across a range of industries. In this sense, the picture is mixed: some industries are getting more competitive (e.g. Autos, logistics), but some seem to be going downhill (textiles, software services).“Are foreign capital inflows India’s ‘Dutch disease’?” An astute observer of the Indian economy asked me this question a few months back. He used the phrase “Dutch disease” to refer to foreign currency inflows that keep the currency stronger than it should be, reducing the competitiveness of domestic enterprises, thereby boosting imports and hurting exports.
This is true, however it is not just being competitive leveraging low currency. It is about being world class in product design and manufacturing.Rahulsidhu wrote:
Much of the attention of the commentators, on this forum and outside, is focused on economic statistics like GDP, inflation and PMIs, but IMO what truly matters is whether industrial competitiveness is improving or degrading, across a range of industries. In this sense, the picture is mixed: some industries are getting more competitive (e.g. Autos, logistics), but some seem to be going downhill (textiles, software services).
No country has ever grown rich without growing a world-beating industrial sector. Is India on the way? Maybe it is, but the persistent high CAD is a worrying sign.
There is an interesting thing happened during early 2000's comes to mind. When SBI was looking for Core Banking Solution tranformation, it found the systems used by similar banks around the world (likes of Bank of America, JP Morgan) is not fit for purpose, because these were developed 30-40 years back and struggling with modern banking. Hence it went for RFP, to build a new system. TCS found a product 'BaNCS' from a small Australian company called FNS, whose product is fit for purpose and presented it as a solution. However, SBI was hesitant since it was a very small company and it cannot trust with liability for such a massive transformation. Hence TCS bought this company along with IP for a very small price. Later implemented the CBS with that product. With the proof of this massive implementation without hiccups, this was showcased to a UK insurance company and sold this product in 2005. Since then around 75% of the UK life and pensions is managed in this platform and in the near future it will reach 90+ with further consolidation in the market and this is a go to product for any one. Just this product alone is providing 4-5Bn$ of TCS revenue now with more than 50K employees are getting employed with this.nam wrote:This is true, however it is not just being competitive leveraging low currency. It is about being world class in product design and manufacturing.Rahulsidhu wrote:
Much of the attention of the commentators, on this forum and outside, is focused on economic statistics like GDP, inflation and PMIs, but IMO what truly matters is whether industrial competitiveness is improving or degrading, across a range of industries. In this sense, the picture is mixed: some industries are getting more competitive (e.g. Autos, logistics), but some seem to be going downhill (textiles, software services).
No country has ever grown rich without growing a world-beating industrial sector. Is India on the way? Maybe it is, but the persistent high CAD is a worrying sign.
US with the strong dollar does a export of 1 trillion dollars! The biggest exporter to India is.... Switerzland!
The core of the argument. Produce what the world wants. The world will buy irrespective of your currency. If the currency is at 60+ to a dollar, icing on the cake.
The lack of competitiveness in most sectors is due to the usual supply side bottlenecks that have plagued us for decades with some exceptions. We simply don't have the infrastructural, policy and legal framework in place to enable industrial output to grow like it did in China. This has started getting addressed on a war footing (by Indian standards) only in the last 2-3 years.Rahulsidhu wrote: Much of the attention of the commentators, on this forum and outside, is focused on economic statistics like GDP, inflation and PMIs, but IMO what truly matters is whether industrial competitiveness is improving or degrading, across a range of industries. In this sense, the picture is mixed: some industries are getting more competitive (e.g. Autos, logistics), but some seem to be going downhill (textiles, software services).
No country has ever grown rich without growing a world-beating industrial sector. Is India on the way? Maybe it is, but the persistent high CAD is a worrying sign.
Great anecdote, and a very good point. Thankssiva509 wrote:
There is an interesting thing happened during early 2000's comes to mind.
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The current opportunity in my mind is the Aadhar Platform, this is a decent biometric based digital identity platform. Our government and private sector should harness it and can be sold worldwide in variety of ways.
Agreed, this would be interesting to see. Specially the data year 2000 onwards.Suraj wrote:If someone can find and post some historical data charting exports vs non-oil imports, that would be very useful. Yes there's an element of bias because some of the oil imports are crude imports that feed refined petroleum output. If you can separate domestic consumption oil imports from overall imports, even better.