Letter From The Editor
THERE are, said the poet Wallace Stevens, 13 ways of looking at a blackbird. The essence of that particular truth came home forcefully last fortnight…
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MANILA OUTLINES 1988 BORROWING, BUDGET PLANS
7 January 1988 Reuters News English (c) 1988 Reuters Limited MANILA, Jan 7 – The Philippine government will issue treasury bills and notes totalling 29.8…
W. GERMAN MINISTER EXPECTED TO BOOST EUROPEAN TIES TO MANILA
16 February 1988 Reuters News English (c) 1988 Reuters Limited MANILA, Feb 16, Reuter – West German Minister of Economics Martin Bangemann is expected to…
PHILIPPINES MOVES TO SPEED UP DEBT/EQUITY SWAPS
19 February 1988 Reuters News (c) 1988 Reuters Limited English MANILA, Feb 19 – The Philippines plans to speed up its sluggish debt/equity swap program,…
Philippines Bit player in debt reform-fernandez
19 February 1988 Reuters News English (c) 1988 Reuters Limited MANILA, Feb 19 – The Philippines’ 27.8 billion dollar foreign debt makes it a bit…
MANILA SPECULATORS PLAY ROULETTE WITH OIL STOCKS
18 March 1988 Reuters News English (c) 1988 Reuters Limited MANILA, March 18, Reuter – Volatile penny oil stocks have raised trading on Manila’s two…
PHILIPPINE GNP SEEN GROWING 6.1 PCT IN 1988
4 April 1988 Reuters News English (c) 1988 Reuters Limited MANILA, April 4, Reuter – The Philippines’ gross national product (GNP) is expected to expand…
JAPAN STRUGGLES TO USE ADB TO RECYCLE SURPLUSES
20 April 1988 Reuters News English (c) 1988 Reuters Limited MANILA, April 20, Reuter – Japan’s attempt to use the Asian Development Bank (ADB) to…
Nepal aims at independent central bank
22 May 1997 Reuters News English (c) 1997 Reuters Limited KATHMANDU, May 22 (Reuter) – Nepal’s coalition government plans to grant the Himalayan kingdom’s central…
PHILIPPINES TO ASK BANKS, IMF FOR NEW LOANS
28 July 1988 Reuters News English (c) 1988 Reuters Limited MANILA, July 28, Reuter – The Philippines plans to approach its creditor banks for a…
JAPAN APPROVES $87 MILLION SPENDING PLAN
29 August 1992 Los Angeles Daily News Valley B2 English (Copyright 1992) The Japanese government Friday approved an $87 billion spending package – the nation’s…
Japan’s economy sinks deeper into mire
14 September 1993 Reuters News English (c) 1993 Reuters Limited TOKYO, Sept 14 (Reuter) – Japan’s sickly economy has been contracting as its stubborn trade…
RBI will not allow rupee volatility – Chidambaram.
29 August 1997 14:33 Reuters News English (c) 1997 Reuters Limited NEW DELHI, Aug 29 (Reuters) – Indian Finance Minister P. Chidambaram said the rupee’s…
India raises import duties to fight deficit
16 September 1997 Reuters News English (c) 1997 Reuters Limited NEW DELHI, Sept 16 (Reuter) – India’s government, clearly alarmed by a fiscal deficit that…
What the Government Needs to Do Now
Despite the crisis, a clear message must be sent to the investor community that India is open for business. There was an initial spurt of…
Growth and the challenge of compensating the losers
INDIA’S ECONOMY is barrelling along at a growth rate of over 9 per cent, savings rates are up, investments are up, more jobs are being…
10 Most Powerful Women in Indian Business
They say nothing sharpens our minds as much as high danger or a threat to our survival. We are prepared to stand and fight when…
India’s Most Valuable Companies
Once every year, we pay obeisance to the best and strongest companies in India. It is not grudging admiration. Our corporate icons deserve every bit…
India’s Best CFOs: Tips From The Finest Financial Brains
I have a confession to make. Many moons ago, I studied to be an accountant and despite one of the world’s toughest entry barriers with…
Deal Chahta Hai
A laughter club in Mumbai is forced to “zip it” because a humourless neighbour is disturbed, not long after a 63-year-old cartoon unleashes a cleansing…
IT’S THE ELECTION, STUPID
The economy is whirling around in a populist spiral Pranab Mukherjee is starting to look worryingly like a feckless heir squandering his generous inheritance while…
Modi Unlimited
Coasting down the six-lane highway from Ahmedabad to Gandhinagar, wheels barely touching the asphalt, it is tempting to forget that you are in the India…
Reserve Bank-Money to Burn
Of all the functions of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), there is one routine task crucial to the health of the economy: incinerating the…
Excise Duty-More Slaps Than Sops
Pranab Mukherjee’s first budget, at first glance so redolent of status quo, is peppered with little booby traps. Two paragraphs in his speech have caused…
ITC – Haksar’s last Hurrah
Sentimentality rarely intrudes in to shareholders’ meetings, but this one was different. Over 3,000 had gathered in the incongruous setting of a Calcutta cathedral compound…
Spate Of Senseless Tragedies
Qutab Minar, the 72.5-metre-high monolithic tower that Iltutmish built 750 years ago, witnessed two shocks in its hoary life-span. In 1368, it was struck by…
HOW TO DO A MANAGEMENT BUYOUT AT 30,000 FEET
The next time you are flying somewhere, do not bury your nose in a book or plug in your earphones. Take a good look around.…
The Method Man
Gujarat’s Chief Minister tells Chaitanya Kalbag in a wide-ranging interview that policy and process make a heady development cocktail Narendra Modi is not a tall…
The Daisy’s Petals
Will we get a Lokpal? Will we not? The answer is blowin’ in the wind It’s a NAIL-BITER. I predicted in another column that the…
Great Stress Test
It’s good we now have a GST, but its design is another matter Since you all love acronyms for the Good and Simple Tax and…
Hollowing Out
Governments cynically scoop out value from their own companies Privatisation will work only when the government sells more than 50 per cent of a state-owned…
Sell Sell Sell
The government must take courage and embrace privatisation Two numbers speak eloquently about our schizophrenia over privatisation: the Rs 2.11 trillion ($32.5 billion) package announced…
Show Me The Jobs
Let’s quit beating the bushes and chase the real quarry The government is striving mightily, but the needle is moving inexorably lower on the jobs…
Bhag Piyush Bhag
Can the new Railway minister outrun the challenges? Piyush Goyal is a chartered accountant, lawyer, former investment banker, former Bharatiya Janata Party treasurer, and a…
Enough Already
The powers that be doth trumpet too much “There is no harm in sometimes being wrong-especially if one is promptly found out” …
How to make more with less
Team leader Modi is fishing in a shallow talent pool How much a hurry is prime minister Narendera Modi in? It depends on your horizon.…
Close, But No Cigar
What lies ahead? A messy GST rollout could be one shock too many after demonetisation… Finance Ministers take on a certain air when they think…
Keep The Ballast
We need our institutions as much as we need our democracy Narendera Modi’s first term in office will be bracketed by malodorous stand-offs with two…
Glass Half-Full?
Strong, sustained growth is possible—if we don’t trip ourselves up We can hope that in the run-up to the next general election we will not…
Viral Fever
The only antidotes to fake news are truth and commonsense Start exercise your smartphone thumb, because the next big election will be fought on our…
Red-Letter Days
Many anniversaries this year, but few happy ones This is a year of anniversaries , some unpleasant, some prescient, some momentous. CE 2019 is important…
NaMo the FMCG
Merchandise, tourism, a board game, a biopic, a web series … If you want to decompress from the 2019 election campaign, and haven’t already donned…
Off the Blocks
For the second time in five years, I was struck by how apposite Rud-yard Kipling’s poem ‘If’ is in relation to Narendra Modi. At one…