Interesting to note that Maha's GDP is $224b out of which $209b came from Mumbai alone. Indicator of an underlying issue.darshhan wrote: This is the link I used.( GDP PPP)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_In ... ies_by_GDP
Whichever statistics you use it is hard to deny that Delhi/NCR has seen stellar growth. It is closing in on Mumbai very fast. And private players are very much part of this growth story.
Global economy at risk as US, Europe and Asia slowIndia is suffering an even sharper slowdown. Its economic growth slowed to a 5.3 percent annual rate in the January-March quarter, the lowest in nine years. Output from India's factories has declined. Its consumers have seen inflation — which has averaged 9.2 percent a year since the start of 2010 — devour their wages.
"It's beyond anything that we would have imagined," said Samiran Chakraborty, head of research at Standard Chartered in Mumbai. "Real wages are falling ... The consumption slowdown along with the investment slowdown has been a double-whammy for the GDP number."
As recently as last year, Indian politicians were claiming their economy could rival China's and surge into double-digit growth, lifting hundreds of millions out of poverty in the process.
Instead, India is mired in a deepening crisis of confidence. Asia's third-largest economy is widely regarded as performing below its potential.
Indians are losing hope that their country's fractious political system will deliver the policies that might unlock a rebound — investments in roads, ports and other projects and lighter regulations to attract more foreign investment.
–In 2007-2008, government revenue from tax and elsewhere totaled 5.4 trillion rupees while total expenses were 7.1 trillion rupees, a shortfall of 1.7 trillion rupees. That was covered by 1.3 trillion rupees in government borrowings and other receipts. So the government overspent its income by one third and financed about one fifth of its expenditure through borrowing.
–Fast forward to 2011-2012. Revenue = 7.7. trillion. Expenses = 13.2 trillion. Shortfall = 5.2 trillion. The gap was funded largely by 4.4 trillion in borrowing. So the government borrows almost two thirds of what it earns and one third of what it spends. The fiscal deficit now amounts to about 68% of revenue.
May one request you to read Ruchir Sharma's "Break Out Nations" and for the benefit of the forum, give us your views on it? Our situation is pretty precarious, back to the wall or not. There may not be much the GOI (this or another) can do to dodge the slow-down that looks like it is coming our way.Suraj wrote:ashi: I hate to break this to you, but there have been 'revolutions' going on in India nonstop since 1947. The overt anger at corruption is a symptom of the growing middle class heading up Maslows chain after their basic needs for food and shelter have been met - they now want a good quality of life. As the urban/rural population ratio gets closer to the 50% mark this will just become much more strident, and that is a good thing, not a bad situation, as the Economist portrays it. In India, the most amount of things get done when the government has its back to the wall. Foreigners don't really get that.
http://www.steelguru.com/indian_news/In ... 67185.htmlPTI reported that India's per capita consumption of steel has gone up by around 25% in the last five years to 57 kg in 2011 against 45.8 kg in 2007.
Notwithstanding the marked improvement, India still lags far behind the world average of 214.7 kg and China's average of 459.8 kg. The average is worse when compared with other Asian peers like Japan and South Korea at 506.7 kg and 1,156.6 kg, respectively.
The Asian average stood at 238.8 in 2011. In the EU, it was 310 kg and in Commonwealth of Independent States it was 212.3 kg. Per capita steel consumption was 263 kg in Nafta and 233.9 kg in the Middle East.
Here you go sire:gakakkad wrote:does not India have the worlds largest ore reserves ? bhy for import ore ? mining mafia ? greens ? could you post link ?
The paper said a Vale SA vessel made a call at Paradip Port, located at India's Odisha province, the country's biggest producer and exporter of iron ore.
But the Vale SA vessel was not there to get iron ore from India. It was there to deliver iron ore to India.
"Selling iron to Odisha is akin to selling ice to Eskimos. Iron-ore imports on the eastern coast were unheard of yet," the Economic Times quoted as saying a head executive working for one of the world's largest miners. Suffice to say, the Vale SA source precisely knew what he or she was saying. The person was an Indian.Though India may not turn into a net iron ore importer, still, the hurdles its steel mining companies face leave them no choice but to source the ingredient overseas.
India is now facing diminishing iron ore inventories, attributed mostly to the government's massive crackdown on illegal mining activities.
Though iron ore imports are still recognisable by the numbers, observers and analysts say this could increase and make India overly dependent on overseas mineral resources which it has so abundantly on its own.
harbans wrote:There was a report i read yesterday that many steel plants in India are now importing Iron Ore!
I think we need not worry about this. US imports oil, while saving Alaska. KSA wants nuclear energy while exporting 10mbbl oil every day and so on...gakakkad wrote:does not India have the worlds largest ore reserves ? bhy for import ore ? mining mafia ? greens ? could you post link ?
Indian ore is generally of good quality. The ones that get exported from Goa, karnataka etc are generally lower quality with lower iron content. The best ores in India are used domestically probably with the exception of the Bailadilla Mines output of Dantewada exported via Vizag.Theo_Fidel wrote:Many Indian plants need higher iron content ores as they are older model. Indian ores are typically lower in iron content.
This was the entire point behind the POSCO type furnaces. They are modern and can take the lower metal content ores India produces. This way we can avoid the present situation where India exports low quality ore at cheap price and imports high quality ore at inflated price. Even POSCO has said it will have to import higher quality ore to mix with lower Indian quality ore. To offset this import cost POSCO planned to export some Indian ore so they can hedge prices. There was a big uproar on this very board about that export business some time back. As it is when POSCO comes on line expect iron ore imports to skyrocket.
Most of the ore that can be used directly in the iron making (60% Fe) are haematite only and that kind of high grade ore is depleted. There is no alternative to benefaction and sintering anyway is done becuase the blast furnaces cant use fines.Theo_Fidel wrote:Many things are getting mixed up here. Iron ore has both Iron content and purity issues. This affects quality and grade. Also older steel plants prefer Fe3O4 over Fe2O3. AFAIK both Keonjhar and Sindhura, which make up 80% of Odisha ore are Fe2O3. Now sintering allows this to be boosted but at a cost and also pollution. Indian ores also contain a lot of trace impurities which must be reduced through washing and concentrating, still higher trace elements mean challenges to high quality steel.
What POSCO will REALLY need to import is high quality coking coal, if it does not go the Corex route.This is what POSCO means by importing higher quality material to improve the output quality.
SECTOR-WISE BLUEPRINT FOR THE YEAR
Ports: Two major ports in Andhra Pradesh and West Bengal at an investment of Rs 35,000 crore
Roads: 9,500 km to be awarded
Civil aviation: Work to start for the Rs 2,100-crore Itanagar airport.
Three new projects to be awarded in Navi Mumbai, Goa and Kannur
* International airports to be announced for Lucknow, Varanasi, Coimbatore, Trichy and Gaya
* An airline hub policy to be finalised. Hubs to be operationalised in Delhi and Chennai
Railways: Elevated rail corridor to be awarded for Mumbai, with a total investment of Rs 20,000 crore
* Plan to be finalised for Mumbai-Ahmedabad high-speed corridor or bullet train project
Power: 18,000-Mw capacity to be added, including 2,000 Mw to be added by the Kudankulam Atomic Power Project
Coal: Coal India to dispatch 470 MT of coal to all sectors; power sector to get an increase of 8.8 per cent at 347 MT
In an early episode of the teleseries Yes, Minister, a Whitehall bureaucrat uses the furniture in a minister’s office as a metaphor for the minister’s inability to get anything done.
“There are two kinds of chairs to go with two kinds of Ministers,” the bureaucrat says. “”One sort folds up instantly; the other sort goes round and round in circles.”
Wednesday’s meeting of key economic ministries, presided over by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, shows an entire government that is going round and round in circles.
Like a truant schoolboy who, having played hooky for much of the academic year, begins desperately to cram come exam-time, Singh and the UPA government he notionally heads have bestirred themselves from their slumber – and are scrambling to show some signs of life.
In the Clash of Ideas over economic policymaking, Modi trumps Manmohan.
At the meeting, Manmohan Singh announced a clutch of infrastructure projects that he identified as being critical to get sinking economic growth back up to respectable levels. Singh also made some boilerplate comments about the compelling need to revive private sector investments – since a fiscally strapped government did not have the capacity to do any heavy lifting.
Singh was particularly at pains to dispel the prevailing perception that the government was seized of a “policy paralysis”, and claimed that on the contrary, his government “meant business”.
The irony of a government whose policy muddles and inability to check corruption on a monumental scale have induced the longest-running Bharat Bandh (in terms of economic policymaking) now pledging to work at top-speed couldn’t have been more stark.
That absurdity was compounded by the absence from the meeting of Pranab Mukherjee, the minister who epitomised a cussed government’s exertions to bludgeon private investors and foreign capital, effectively forcing them to take their money and run.
Perhaps Mukherjee reckons he is merely marking time in the Finance Ministry since he is emerging as the most likely candidate for Presidency. Babus in his ministry too, already sensing the coming change, have stopped working, and are sitting on their files.
To the extent that Singh’s comments reflect an appreciation of the supply-side failures that have choked India’s growth in recent years, they of course reflect a government that’s coming out of abject denial.
But Singh’s manifest attempt to convey a sense of governmental urgency fails to convince because we’ve “been there, done that.” Singh has, since his government was returned to power in 2009, set many such deadlines for key policy decisions to be taken and for projects to be cleared. But in the absence of coherence in economic policymaking and coordinated policy action among the ministries, nothing has been done to change the situation on the ground that holds up implementation.
Whether it’s policy on land acquisition or environmental clearances or telecom spectrum allocation or even just taxation, the government’s mulishness and the reams of red tape it has tied itself up in have beaten back private investor interest and effectively ground projects into the ground.
Which is why the resort to reviving long-delayed infrastructure projects reflects the failure of imagination of a government that has no big ideas to offer.
Ironically, a far better articulation of the problems that beset economic policymaking at the Centre – and the prescription for there remedy – has been offered by Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi in an interview to Economic Times.
In the interview, Modi defines the role of the government in perhaps the most categorical terms ever expressed by a politician.
“The government,” says Modi, “has no business to be in business. It should play the role of a facilitator.” In Gujarat, he adds, “investors don’t have to grease the palm of politicians or bureaucrats. There are well laid-out policies. I believe that country can progress only if we end red-tapism. No red tape, only red carpet, is my policy towards investors.”
Modi identifies the root cause of the economic crisis that confronts India today. “Before any individual or company invests, they look for safety of their money and profit from the investment. We can provide safety for their money through clarity in policies, transparency in decision-making and decent implementation. Is the UPA government able to do these? The answer is: no.”
Modi also points to the cussedness of the UPA government in holding back State governments’ efforts to attract investments. ”Iron ore is available in abundance in Odisha. But the Congress and the government led by it at the Centre are opposing entry of steel companies into the state.”
Such policies, reckons Modi, “is naturally making investors jittery. They want to work with the state governments but the Centre is playing the obstructionist.” In the case of Gujarat, Modi says, “the Centre went to the extent of unleashing enforcement agencies on those who promised investments in Gujarat at the Vibrant Gujarat meet.”
Modi’s prescription: “They should stop preaching and do what they are expected to do – govern.”
It isn’t often that we see a clash of ideas in the economic policymaking space in the public domain. Given the populist instincts of most politicians, we don’t always hear coherent articulations of the role of government in facilitating economic growth.
Manmohan Singh‘s policy pronouncements at Wednesday’s meeting reflect the tiredness of a tired government. In contrast, Modi offers a Big Idea on the role of government – one that he has actually implemented in Gujarat with manifest success in recent years.
