Government pushes for monetary easing despite central bank doubts While India swelters in record high June temperatures, senior officials in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government are sweating for another reason. The heat is coming from a debate over whether the country is poised for a V-shaped recovery after last November’s shock demonetization or if it…
NEW DELHI — India’s economy is doing well despite slower growth in the first quarter of fiscal 2016-17, but moribund private investment and a mushroom cloud of huge bad loans over banks are worries, according to the chief economic adviser to the Indian government. “In the short run, our biggest challenges are private investment and…
Government must create jobs, not just offer cash: renowned Indian economist Chaitanya Kalbag, Contributing Writer NEW DELHI — Narendra Modi’s government unveiled an ambitious budget last week with huge handouts for India’s poor, a move that could certainly win him votes in the upcoming elections but will do little to alleviate poverty in the long…
A $5 trillion economy is a stretch. Do we have the running legs? In 2018, India’s per-capita GDP was $2,015.60, according to the World Bank. This makes sense — our economy is currently sized at $2.7 trillion, and our population is around 1.35 billion. This is considerably behind the US ($62,641), and not even a…
India is walking into a middle-income trap with its eyes wide open The good news is that every. body — the IMF was the latest to fall in line on Tuesday — agrees with the RBI that India’s GDP growth rate will be a modest 7% in 2019-20. The 0.3 percentage point reduction in its…
Does this festive season herald fireworks or damp squibs? It is amazing how things come around. I was listening to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Houston speech. After speaking in several Indian languages, Modi said, “Maine itna hi kaha hai: Everything is fine.” Suddenly, I remembered the theme song from 3 Idiots. Eight years have gone…
I should have titled this column “The Audacity of Hype”. Reading some of the speeches made at and around the Group of 20 summit in Brisbane, it almost sounded like a lovefest around joint action and joint reaction with the exception of Vladimir Putin, who was clearly the black sheep because of Russia’s incursions into…
The good news is that everybody– the International Monetary Fund was the latest to fall in line on Tuesday– agrees with the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) that India’s gross domestic product (GDP) growth rate will be a modest 7% in 2019-20. The 0.3 percentage point reduction in its forecast is because of “a weaker-than-expected…
In 2018, India’s per-capita gross domestic product (GDP) was $2015.60, according to the World Bank. This makes sense– our economy is currently sized at $2.7 trillion, and our population is around 1.35 billion. This is considerably behind the United States ($62,641) and not even a fourth of China’s $9,770.80. The Bank’s data show that India’s…
Islamabad’s response to request for cooperation on Mumbai blasts will test the commitment given in Havana Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said on Tuesday that Pakistan would have to prove that it was serious about joining hands with India in cracking down on terrorism, and the first test was the Mumbai train explosion findings. “How else…
“Curiouser and curiouser” sums up India’s economy. There is little or no credit, tepid business and consumer confidence, exports are struggling, and yet gross domestic product (GDP) grew by a healthy 7.7 percent in the January-March quarter, and is seen rising by 7.4 percent in fiscal 2018-19. If you read the Reserve Bank of India’s…
Chaitanya Kalbag, Contributing writer Every Indian bank note carries two reassuring messages: “Guaranteed by the central government,” and above the signature of the governor of the Reserve Bank of India, the words: “I promise to pay the bearer the sum of … rupees.” At midnight on Nov. 8, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi used…
Modi has one job: Get India’s lazy tiger of an economy to roar Indian finance minister Arun Jaitley will have two tough acts to follow when he stands in a few hours to present India’s budget for 2015-16. The first: On Feb. 26, railway minister Suresh Prabhu did a rousing, clackety-clack rendition of the railway…
If you believe in signs and omens, all the days and dates this year coincide with 1947, our year of independence (I have Amitabh Bachchan to thank for this nugget). The movie “Great Expectations” was also launched in 1947. That fits in with the sentiment nationwide. The expectations are scary because we have dug ourselves…
Optimism is good, but let’s not be foolhardy. Chaitanya Kalbag It is good that we are feeling bucked up at the beginning OF 2018. Major economies expect growth in tandem for the first time since the global financial crisis of 2008. World trade is seen growing at a decent clip after two slow years. Commodity prices…
Chaitanya Kalbag NEW DELHI, June 2 (Reuters) – India’s Finance Minister Yashwant Sinha put up a spirited defence of his “investor-friendly” budget on Tuesday and said he was not unduly worried about inflation so long as the economy grew strongly. In an interview with Reuters Television a day after he unveiled the federal budget for…
Chaitanya Kalbag NEW DELHI, June 3 (Reuters) – India’s fiscal targets for the current year are not just a “hope and a prayer” even if there is a trade-off between growth and Inflation, the government’s chief economic adviser said on Wednesday. Shankar Acharya told Reuters he did not agree with critics who had labelled Finance…
Timing is everything, and with a number of state elections soon, leading to the general election next year, cynicism and opportunism are manifest. The Congress-led government now in power will be remembered as the most corrupt in our history. I remember visiting the Chilean poet Pablo Neruda’s house in Isla Negra, west of Santiago, a…
Or, why India really needs to dig itself out of a mineral hole Last week I was on a flight to Mumbai. About two hours in, the captain announced that there was unseasonal heavy rain ahead and it might be difficult to land in such bad weather. “We have fuel for about fifteen minutes,” he…
From the Editor When I stepped into this role in mid-2010, it seemed India was unstoppable. Gross Domestic Product growth had averaged 8.5 per cent since 2004, when the United Progressive Alliance won power. The financial markets in the United States and Europe were in disarray after the US sub-prime crisis laid down a napalm…
From the Editor I had never handled a tool in my life; and yet, in time, by labour, application, and contrivance, I found at last that I wanted nothing but I could have made it, especially if I had had tools. However, I made abundance of things, even without tools; and some with no more…
And now at the end he found himself in his own house, on his own half-lot of land, his own portion of the earth. That he should have been responsible for this seemed to him…stupendous.” …
Everybody is going to die, but I am going to die last, says Vedanta’s chairman He started out as a scrap trader in Patna. Today, with a personal fortune of $3.5 billion, Anil Agarwal is one of the richest men in the world. Over the last three decades, he has transformed the Vedanta Group into…
Independence Day is a good excuse for some economic chest-thumping. We should be proud that lndia is a free-enterprise democracy. Imagine the world’s burden if we were a basket case of 1.35 billion poor people. We may complain about inequality and the disproportionate number of billionaires, but it is possible to rise from rags to…
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 suffer the type of jolts to our nervous systems that hit us in November 2016 and July 2017 with demonetisation and the introduction of the GST. “Those two shocks seem…
Like the clever taxpayer, it will wag the system There is no loophole that has not met an Indian taxpayer. A Hindi proverb says you can never straighten a dog’s tail (kutte ki poonch…). Don’t blame the poor soul who is using adaptation techniques that would put other evolutionary survivors to shame. The Smithsonian lists…
Palliatives, pain-killers or band-aids: take your pick We are so frozen in the headlights of the onrushing slowdown that even a flicker leads us to believe that we have seen friendly djinns in the darkness. It is clear that Narendra Modi’s sixth year in power will be his worst in economic terms. The GDP is…