GHATOTKACHSERIESIII

A strategic commentary on India from a right-of-centre perspective

Wednesday, May 31, 2017

Indian Economy At Inflexion Point



Indian Economy At Inflexion Point

The Central Statistics Office (CSO) data stating that the first quarter of calendar 2017 delivered a reduced GDP growth of 6.1% has reignited the debate on demonetisation.

This even though the whole year, fiscal 2016, delivered 7.1%. This kept India just a whisker ahead of China at 6.9%, to retain its “fastest growing major economy in the world tag.”

That the data was released on the same day as major international rating agency Moody put out a forecast for fiscal 2017 at 7.5% growth, and 2018 at 7.7%, indicated that the demonetisation was likely to have had only a passing effect on India’s growth trajectory.

Countering criticism fro the Opposition that even these figures were less than the 8% delivered for full year 2015, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley called 7 to 8% GDP growth the “new normal” for India, and spectacular by international standards.

This moreso, with Moody downgrading China’s sovereign rating for the first time in 30 years, and forecasting just 6.5% GDP growth for it in 2017.  

Despite the massive criticism of demonetisation raging afresh, by May 2017 it had become clear that the move has added a crore of new taxpayers, if the application for new permanent account (PAN) numbers is a reliable guide.

And then there are the thousands of Income Tax investigations arising out of demonetisation, and the large cash deposits it occasioned. This scrutiny is also being extended beyond, in terms of the revamped Benami law, now with teeth, and showing results already.

This projected economic performance for 2017, and beyond, is despite the Union Budget of February 1, 2017 which practically let off 96% of existing tax payers, with taxable incomes of Rs. 5 lakhs or less, from paying any at all. This, by lowering their tax rate to just 5% .

Corporations with under Rs. 50 crores in turnover, the vast majority, also had their tax rate lowered to 25%.

India is indeed looking good. This despite a worrisome non-performing assets (NPA) problem in most banks, involving up to 20% of their loan books.

Then, there is the low job creation at the completion of 36 months of this administration, weak private sector investment, and a real estate sector in the doldrums since 2012.

However, agriculture has done well enough, supported by consecutive good monsoons.

The Government, on its part, has mounted an unprecedented attack on the NPA mountain of Rs. 10 lakh crores, by setting about auctioning assets, engineering bank mergers and asset reconstruction, other punitive measures, all under the auspices of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI).

However, it is the foreign brokerages and investors who tend to see the good in the economy. Ridham Desai of Morgan Stanley has pointed out, we have to count "fiscal prudence, greater transparency, more stability in the tax structure, turnaround in projects, good monetary policy..."

Desai goes on to praise this government's "increased investment spending", meaning the considerable emphasis on infrastructure development including roads and highways, ports, airports, bullet trains, modernisation of the Indian Railways, city metro mass transit/transportation initiatives and so on.

Through all this, and increases in salary and pensions for government personnel and those in the armed forces, the fiscal deficit is contained within the target of 3.2%.

Inflation is not expected to exceed 5% according to Moody, inclusive of any effect from the implementation of the "one country, one tax" regime of  General Sales Tax (GST), that some observers expect will add 2% to GDP.

This will, if it happens, explode the new normal to double digits a couple of years down the line.

That securing its passage was the most heroic action of this Government in the legislatures, is going to go down in the history books.

Other analysts expect 4% or even 3% inflation, with petroleum prices staying subdued, after an abortive bid to rally.

RBI itself has made bold to point towards 2% inflation, but is prudently not cutting interest rates further as yet.

The strengthening Indian rupee is expected to be at Rs. 62 to the US dollar by year-end, a strong factor in seeing the enhanced foreign institutional investor (FII) flows into the stock market, despite relatively high valuations.

India is turning out to be the best performing emerging market (EM) and this sets up a virtuous cycle of even more investment coming in later.

 International brokerages that pour in billions of dollars, are projecting Sensex at 31,000 by December, even though it looks like it may reach there very much sooner.

Similarly, the Nifty is expected to climb to around 10,650, a thousand points above its present point too.

The "broader market", meaning the midcap and smallcap space that has already been outperforming the largecaps by a long chalk over the last two years, is still climbing.

The answer to this may be in the mouth-watering returns they offer, compared to the largecaps, if only on a more selective basis going forward.

Will this exuberance in the stock market spill over into a more widespread boom in the "real" economy?

Traditionally, it always has, giving a helping hand to the real estate sector for a start.

However, this time, the international investing community may be in the act of rerating India, with greater political stability as the kicker.

The likelihood of the Modi administration securing a second term for itself is very high.

Its approval ratings for the policies it is following including its attack on corruption and sectarian vote-bank politics is solid.

India is determined to upgrade its military apparatus and showing firmness in the face of security challenges. Its vulnerability vis a vis both Pakistan and China is therefore being discounted.

India's success in foreign policy with diverse parts of the immediate neighbourhood and also broader Asia, Africa, Europe, America, Japan, Australia, Russia, Iran, West Asia, Central Asia, and even the smaller countries of the world, is unprecedented.

The efforts to set up a defence manufacturing complex are starting to produce results.

Two joint ventures, one with the South Koreans and another with the Americans involving leaders of the private sector such as L&T and Reliance, for howitzers, have been operationalised. This is on top of the very successful missile development and manufacturing programmes ongoing.

Other initiatives, for naval troop carriers have been floated. Talks are on for fighter jets, helicopters, battle tanks, armoured carriers, more submarines even as the joint venture with Scorpene is delivering, anti-ballistic missile shields, protective gear, night vision equipment, small arms etc.

These together will account for a massive $150 billion per annum in foreign investment in this sector alone.

Without all this too, the country has witnessed the largest foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows ever since this Government took over, with current year figures surpassing those of the earlier two.

The hump therefore, that the economy seems to have surmounted, is not just of demonetisation, of just a few months ago, but the economic nose dive this Government inherited in May 2014.

For: ABP Live
(1,160 words)
June 2nd, 2017
Gautam Mukherjee


Posted by GHATOTKACHSERIES III at 3:03 AM No comments:
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Thursday, May 18, 2017

Three Years Of Modi's Systemic Reforms Presage The Next Seven



Three Years Of Modi’s Systemic Reforms Presage The Next Seven

There is not a thought that is being thought in the West or the East that is not active in some Indian mind- EP Thompson

The unprecedented hallmark of the Modi administration at the three year mark is an almost total absence of corruption and scams in high places.

This is in sharp contrast to the procession of corruption charges against senior members of the previous dispensation, and indeed much of the present Opposition. Charges that are coming home to roost now.

And yet, the BJP in governance is only almost clean. Vestiges of the mid 1990s Vyapam Scam, still cling to its state of Madhya Pradesh.

Besides, not everything in the domain of the NDA allies, such as the Shiromani Akali Dal, and Shiv Sena, come up roses.

However, in a relativist world, the Modi Government is determined to make its zero tolerance for corruption the leit motif .

Not content with running a clean administration, it is going after black money. Post-demonetisation it has become easier. This plus the mother lode of benaami property, armed with a revived law, with teeth.   

From erstwhile Comptroller & Auditor General (CAG) charges of crony capitalism, the Modi Government claims governance victories out of auctioning coal and mineral mining blocks, as well as the telecommunications spectrum.

Together, these are projected to earn more than Rs. 5 lakh crores for the Government.

Linking disbursements of Government payments with the bio-metric AADHAR Card, bolstered by an Act of parliament, has led to an avoidance of over Rs. 50,000 crores in fraudulent payments.

Many millions of the unbanked poor have been recruited into the system, well before demonetisation, and its narrative of a cashless economy in its aftermath.

Demonetisation has not only turned the country far more digital financially, but has also netted nearly a crore of fat new income tax assessees.

This, even as 96% of the existing assessees, with income under a taxable Rs. 5 lakhs, have been rendered practically tax free.

The Government also has not shied away from tackling the Rs. 10 lakh crore Non Performing Asset (NPA) mountain.

Using an ordinance for quick activation of the Banking Regulations Act, it has armed the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) with powers to go after the  bad corporate debtors and their assets. Another law to seize assets of run-aways and absconders is in the works.

Apart from a clean administration and its physical clean ups as in Swacch Bharat, inclusive of its toilet-building push, and the elusive Ganga Clean Mission, other great themes are also discernible. These are its beavering away at systemic, enabling, reform.

Juxtaposed with this, is a revamping of India’s foreign policy, and a raising of its profile. One, that not only acknowledges the importance of individual Indians in distress abroad for the first time, but is confident enough to trade favours with other countries. This, more often than not, on a bilateral basis.

A tinge of militarism, forced upon the policy landscape by frequent provocations from Pakistan and sly barbs from China, is a departure from the submissiveness of the previous government.

Combined with a massive buying/manufacturing push in this area, India is clearly arming to take on both its unfriendly neighbours, if necessary.   

Domestically, Narendra Modi and Amit Shah have shown their ability, to win elections, at various levels, most of the time.

Collectively, these broad streams presage the progress to come.

Together they will transform not only our expectations of national growth/ well-being and our place in the world, but qualitative skilling, jobs generation, and freedom of choice.

Even those initiatives that have failed for now, such as the attempt to reform the judiciary, and reform labour laws, show promise.

And those that are working- solar and nuclear power development,  satellites, missiles, space, are indeed good to behold.

A recent online poll conducted with 40,000 participants from 200 cities around the country, gives Modi a 61% approval rating for meeting expectations, and a 69% rating of optimism about the future.

The fact that notable reformist legislation, pending for years, such as the GST has been passed in the face of intense obstruction shows the determination of this Government.

Compared to the battle for GST, other path-breaking laws such as the Insolvency & Bankruptcy Code, the Land Acquisition Act, and RERA, to regulate the real estate space, seem almost facile.

Even the struggle to amalgamate the hearts and minds of the people in J&K while subduing the insurgency in the Kashmir Valley, is making dogged progress, much to the anger of those opposed to it.

Mixed results against the Maoists and other insurgents show that the Government is reluctant to seek a purely military solution against such internal militants. However, the position, under intense provocation and many casualties, is hardening.

The old RSS/VHP/SS/BJP promise of a Ram temple in Ayodhya is inching forward with the Government content to back the judicial outcome expected to sanction its building. 

In a departure from its much vilified past, the Sangh Parivar, in most of its components, has been unabashedly admitted into the mainstream.

This, with deserved gratitude for its contribution towards the success of the NDA at various levels.

Hindutva may not be everybody’s cup of tea, but it is, under the Modi administration, allowed to contend, along with the Bishops, Maulanas and the Godless Communists. 

No one can accuse this Government fairly of a lack of tolerance given the virulence of the regular attacks against its policies and actions.

Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) has picked up aggregating to $156 billion in the three years with $56 billion of it coming in 2016-17 alone.

Likewise, Foreign Institutional Investors (FII) have,   along with Domestic Institutional Investors (DII), taken the stock market to all-time highs at present.

Defence Manufacturing, just beginning to  operationalise, alone has the potential to absorb $150 billion in investment per annum.

The Make in India programme has been most successful so far in the automotive and electronic industries, accounting for some $56 billion in investment.

FII jumps every time there are administrative reforms to widen and deepen the debt market in particular and as our companies at the top end get bigger. DII has grown substantially, and the mutual fund industry is bigger than it has ever been.

GDP growth will probably return 7.5% for this fiscal, and over 8% in 2018, after GST has contributed its mite.

Inflation, thanks in part to persistently low oil prices and a strengthening rupee, has halved, falling to 4% from 8%.

The fiscal deficit is now targeting 3.2%  with 3% in 2018.

Rural electrification and roads are other success stories. Every village is slated to be electrified by mid 2018. Two crore poor households have received LPG.

The Indian Government today, is, above all, is on a massive infrastructure build-up, to drive GDP growth, provide employment, and boost modernisation.

It is building city metros for mass transportation, putting in new-fangled bullet trains, and modernising the long neglected Railways. The North East of the country  is being inducted into  the mainstream. The aviation sector too has been made more accessible.

Its divestment and privatisation drives have been muted, and the Modi Government does not seem to be on a particularly strong privatisation drive in areas other than defence production.

Socially, it is on a drive to reform the narrative of India, from reservations, quotas and vote-bank based development to its sabka saath, sabka vikas platform.

This Government appeals not only to India’s youthful voter, now in a 65% majority at least till 2035, but also to Muslim women, long suppressed by medieval practices, and the Shia minority, shunted aside quite often by Sunni, even Salafist majorities.

This is being borne out by rising voting percentages in BJP’s favour trending towards 40% or even more.

The old “secularist” versus Hindu “communal” divide seems to have collapsed decisively. 

Meanwhile, Modi, supported in this by the Election Commission (EC) is pressing for simultaneous elections to be held for the centre and the states. This will also free up more time to concentrate on governance.

In the end, is the “True North” for electoral politics changing towards a more inclusive polity?  One composed of those not served by the old order.

If that is so, it is the most hopeful prospect to emerge out of Narendra Modi’s first 1,000 days.   

For: The Sunday Guardian
(1,384 words)
May 18th, 2017

Gautam Mukherjee
Posted by GHATOTKACHSERIES III at 7:25 AM No comments:
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Monday, May 15, 2017

One Belt One Noose



One Belt One Noose

Chinese scholars and officials spoke feelingly of “Entity diplomacy” at the third edition of the India-China Think-Tank Dialogue held in January 2016, nearly a year and a half ago.

It was held in Beijing, and all discussions veered around to the One-Belt-One-Road (OBOR) initiative. And its watery adjunct, the New Silk Route, a string of naval bases, mainly around South Asia, the South & East China Seas, and the Indian Ocean. These too are meant to be ostensibly commercial, but are likely to be covertly military, even hegemonistic.

Samir Saran and Ritika Passi of the Observer Research Foundation, in an Op-ed  from February 2016, likened the “Entity” idea, somewhat disbelievingly, to an EU-like thing. It spoke of “one economic continent”.

They however cited a “lack of transparency.” Is OBOR a threat or an opportunity, they asked, ending up ticking both boxes.

The “Entity” idea was, to quote the lofty Chinese description: “engaging within and across regions to secure the best interests of an entity that is necessarily larger and with interests broader than those of any sovereign.”

Other hopeful mentions in the article, based on the assumption that China was keen to “solicit Indian partnership”, and that Beijing might become a “meaningful interlocutor prompting rational behaviour from Islamabad” have since been squarely belied.

Cut to the present. President Xi Jinping kicked off the two-day OBOR/ New Silk Route summit on Sunday 14th May by pledging to invest $124 billion, after calling it the “project of the century.”
Lest anybody is confused that this will be a cornucopia of Chinese largesse, he outlined the financing of a slew of Chinese lending banks with most of this money.

The contentious China-Pakistan-Economic Corridor (CPEC), the “flagship project” of OBOR, runs through PoK and Gilgit/Baltistan, Indian territories, currently illegally occupied by Pakistan.
And, after cutting through the length of Pakistan, via its capital Islamabad, it ends up at Gwadur on the Arabian Gulf.

A massive port development there, is nevertheless located in restive Balochistan. A huge province, the largest in Pakistan, is chafing under its brutal human rights abusing yoke, ever since it was annexed in 1948, with British connivance.

China ignores all this, and other contradictions of China’s own positions: with regard to Taiwan, occupied Tibet, Inner Mongolia, the restive province of Xinkiang which borders PoK, and from where the CPEC begins.

President Xi, pushing his statist propaganda, gamely intoned: “All countries should respect each other’s sovereignty, dignity and territorial integrity, each other’s   development paths and social systems, and each other’s core interests and major concerns.”  

But by now, May 2017, Samir Saran, Vice President of the Observer Research Foundation, dropped the reasonableness of his 2016 piece, and struck a strident note with regard to OBOR. He even blamed the UK and EU for going along with it, calling them both “complicit”.

The OBOR summit had invited 64 countries. Including itself as the 65th , the would be imperial durbar accounts for 60% of the world’s population, and 30% of its GDP, according to Hong Kong based think-tank  Fung Business Intelligence.

Finally, only 29 heads of state, (of which 20 are from the needier OBOR countries), turned up, amongst some 1,500 delegates.

All of the Middle East and Europe have not sent their top leaders.

India hasn’t sent anyone at all, because its major concerns have gone unanswered.
Beijing’s “hardline approach”, emulated increasingly by its “all-weather friend” Pakistan, as Saran points out, is not very reassuring.

China has changed the demographics in Xinkiang. In what is now only a nominally Muslim majority province, there is a 48% Uyghur Muslim population to 40% Han Chinese. And the Muslims there live with severe restrictions. The demography has been wilfully reengineered from 90% Uyghur in the 1950s. The Han Chinese in Xinkiang now hold all the key jobs too.

Likewise, Pakistan changed a law permitting non-locals, mainly Sunnis, to buy land in Gilgit-Baltistan in 1974, in what was then a Shia majority province.

As of 2001, writes Saran, the old population ratio of 1:4 (non-locals to locals), has changed to 3:4, quoting the South Asia Intelligence Review.

Are there pointers here for what India could do for itself in the Valley?

Tibet too has seen a million natives slaughtered to make way for Han domination. And yet, the Chinese are rattled by any move from the legitimacy represented by the Dalai Lama.

Saran also worries about the future Chinese designs on J&K and Ladakh. But, he doesn’t concede India’s ability to create “Himalayan hurdles” for OBOR, going forward.

Veteran journalist Prem Shankar Jha pointed out in a March 2016 essay, that,  “China’s single and unswerving aim since the Bandung honeymoon ended in 1962 has been to keep India in line by periodically creating tension.”

After admiringly elaborating on China’s massive infrastructure building internally, Jha conceded OBOR has come about because China has huge excess capacity.

India could benefit, says Jha, in chorus with the liberal-leftist refrain from other quarters, ignoring the wildly askew trade balance with China.

And by May 2017, Jha is in full spate. He suggests India is cutting off its nose to spite China’s face. Why can’t India keep issuing demarches as it has been doing since the 1960s when China first built the Karakoram Highway, and muck in?

And yet, Jha writes: “China needs India to become a partner, for while the combined GDP of the seven countries in which the bulk of OBOR  investment are currently envisaged: Russia, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Pakistan and Malaysia was $2.1 trillion in 2015, that of India alone was 2.256 trillion.”

So, India, with a GDP presently of $2.5 trillion, “could” writes Jha, “make the difference between a quick, relatively painless recovery from its recession and a prolonged painful one”.

But why would that be India’s concern? And how does Jha’s “nose”  and “face”  fulmination, aimed at Prime Minister Modi’s foreign policy on China, add up?

And what has China done to assuage even one of Indian concerns? Did it think, about how, in order to make OBOR viable, it needed to champion India for both the NSG and the UNSC? Did it cooperate on defining the borders, and stop making its false claims on Arunachal Pradesh?

Did it, as Saran had hoped, reign in its rogue ward Pakistan, or its India policy of a ‘thousand cuts”?
Did it broker the return of PoK and Gilgit/Baltistan to India to restore legitimacy to the CPEC?
Did it press its vassal Pakistan to grant independence to Baluchistan to secure the use of Gwadar from its rightful owners?

So, it is probably not fair to expect India not to offer “sub-conventional support for oppressed people in Gilgit, Tibet, Xinkiang, and Inner Mongolia” as Saran puts it.

And, also, to: “intervene more directly in highlighting such issues in Balochistan.”  

For: ABP Live
(1,130 words)
May 15th, 2017

Gautam Mukherjee
Posted by GHATOTKACHSERIES III at 9:37 PM No comments:
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Thursday, May 4, 2017

Ordinance To Collar 40 Big Debtors: Gives Bite To RBI



Ordinance To Collar 40 Big Debtors: Gives Bite To RBI

The Union Cabinet has sent a momentous economic ordinance to the President of India for his assent.  It empowers the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), to tackle the mountain (over Rs.6 lakh crores by December of FY16, with other stressed assets   taking it to nearly Rs. 10 lakh crores), of non-performing assets (NPAs).

These NPAs are mostly on the books of wholly-owned government banks, and some private/foreign banks too. And the bad debts have been incurred by the public sector and private sector alike.

Dark suggestions of crony capitalism, loose lending criteria, and corruption in high places, particularly in the UPA years, cling to them.

So this move, by the Modi Cabinet, clearly says that this Government wants corporate borrowers to pay up. They are not small farmers in distress, and should not expect to get away with stealing the tax payer’s money.    

There has been a clamour from economists, think-tanks, investment banks/management consultants, for the high-street banks to spin-off  NPAs to  so called “bad banks”, at a discount.
This would indubitably clean up the bank’s books, but what of the millions in tax payer money wilfully squandered? And this, without any pain or consequence to the defaulting borrowers!

This sort of collection banking is, however, common in the developed economies.  The American firm, Dunn & Bradstreet, that peddles “information services” here in India, is a famous name in this space.

How did we get here?  From the eighties onwards, “leveraging” has been fashionable world-wide, and caused much economic excess via its borrow-and-spend ethos. India too, has obviously, not been immune to the trend.

But, in India, there has always been a softer approach to collections, at least in the formal sector, eager not to be identified with rapacious traditional bania money-lenders and “pathans”.

 Therefore, collection agencies have a tough time collecting even petty retail credit card debt, and repossessing cars, motorcycles etc. bought on EMIs in default, with no laws with teeth to back them.

And the Indian courts are not at all helpful, tut-tutting instead about client harassment and directing collection agencies to go easy.

The idea that desi bad banks could turn a profit on what they are able to recover is therefore fairly utopian.

The legislation and the mind set to allow tough recovery measures, including seizing/freezing of  assets, collaterised or not, and criminal jail sentences/debtors’ prisons, is simply non-existent here.

Most of our laws are antiquated, left over from the British colonial era and designed to serve the interests of a predatory East India Company or Raj. Or later, the very low growth Fabian socialist decades of perpetual shortages.

Moreover, the relevant laws are loosely drafted, overlap and contradict each other, and are subject to varying interpretations. This necessitated a modern bankruptcy law which is now happily in place too.

 This cabinet decision to empower the RBI, should be seen therefore, as both path breaking and a move to provide bite to the central bank, familiar with the Indian banking space. It is backed by the might of the Government to deal with the problem.

No outlier new private bank could possibly be a better option - unless it is in fact, a subsidiary of the RBI.

Meanwhile, without either parliamentary amendments to the Banking Regulation Act, or an instant ordinance, nothing effective could be done to bring NPAs down.

The RBI couldn’t, for example, force the biggest corporate debtors, some 40 in number, to pay up, sell out to stronger hands, merge, asset strip, or convert their debt into equity, to favour the lenders.

Neither could it direct specific action against defaulters, or instruct the bank to settle a debt by taking a “haircut”.

And since most large, essentially blue-chip debtors, insist they are unwitting victims of an economic down turn, but are fundamentally experienced, professional, and sound, this ordinance might cause them put money where their mouths are.

After  all, the top 10 reads like a who’s who of corporate India Inc.- Reliance, Vedanta, Essar, Adani, Jaypee, JSW, GMR, Lanco, Videocon and GVK-all in the private sector.

They cut a wide swathe through mining, petroleum refining, steel, ports, power, infrastructure, construction, airports, textiles, aviation, manufacturing and so on.

Public sector giants such as SAIL, GAIL, Power Grid Corporation, NBCC, NMDC, also feature prominently.

While the Government now poised to tackle NPAs vigorously, hopefully it will proceed against its own with equal keenness. It has this ordinance, the new bankruptcy law, and a revamped company law to work with.

The defaulters, because when they don’t pay several consecutive instalments, that is what they are, have their own views.

They have blamed their woes on Government regulatory obstruction and extreme tardiness, if not outright corruption, a sudden squeeze on further lending, and impractical/expensive, if not impossible terms, set for environmental licencing.

The refrain was that if these road blocks were removed promptly, and indeed the Modi Government has already done much to meet the situation half way, there is nothing really bad about their debt.

Nor, in an ideal roll out, would budget and cost overruns, interest balloons, human resource problems, security issues, and other difficulties including land availability, connectivity,  utility allocation shortfalls, have arisen in the first place.

But some amount of taking advantage of a soft rule book and making excuses will now be put to the test.   

 The overall picture is indeed looking bright. India’s GDP growth is headed towards 8% post GST implementation. The fiscal deficit could dip towards 0.9% from the outer limit of 3.5% today. The rupee, fell from 68 to 63 and change to the US dollar, strengthening nearly 6% in a month, and could keep getting stronger, lightening the import burden in the process, and attracting more foreign investment. Interest rates are tending downwards. Inflation is under control. Exports are reworking their strategies, and not just because of a strong rupee, but also because of increasing protectionism in various markets.

FDI and FII, suffering also from bottle-necks and lack of depth are nevertheless at all-time highs.

The sovereign ratings are, at least from Moody’s, one of the biggest in the business, seen to be already “positive”.

Fixing the problematic NPAs and hence the banking system, sized at about a third of the 2017 annual budget (Rs. 21.47 lakh crores), can only improve the outlook.

Amongst all the better economic news, the massive NPAs, exposed by RBI insistence on stricter “provisioning” and no more fudged restructuring and reclassification, by the former Governor Dr.Raghuram Rajan, stick out.

This unprecedented announcement therefore, has already seen public sector unit (PSU) bank stocks rising 10%, even before its detailed provisions have been made public.

For: ABP Live
(1,102 words)
May 4th, 2017

Gautam Mukherjee
Posted by GHATOTKACHSERIES III at 7:41 AM No comments:
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About Me

GHATOTKACHSERIES III
An independent, right-of-centre, strategic commentary. Find critical and new perspectives on possible and probable developments in economics, politics and trends from an India centric point-of-view. GHATOTKACHSERIES and GHATOTKACHSERIES II are the predecessor blogs- with 80 essays written between June 2005 and June 2008 on the first and revived once more in 2009 with fiction, poetry and humorous impressions. GHATOTKACHSERIES II has 500 articles on economics, politics and Indian current affairs published in a number of right-of-centre digital and print mediums in addition to being posted on the blog-up to August 2015.
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