The Spectre of Higher Oil Prices C .P. Chandrasekhar and Jayati Ghosh
On May 2, the Trump administration brought to an end the waiver the US had granted eight countries, including India, of sanctions on imports of oil from Iran. Having pulled out of the 2015 multi-country agreement with Iran to limit its nuclear programme, the US government had invoked the nuclear threat from that country to impose sanctions. The most damaging element of those sanctions for both Iran and the world’s oil importers was the ban this implied on imports of oil from Iran. Even with the waivers, sanctions had significantly reduced global oil supply. According to the International Energy Agency,…
Blind Conservatism C. P. Chandrasekhar
This year’s just-concluded spring meetings of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank were marked by a mood of gloom among the world’s leading policy makers. As recently as January 2018 the IMF had claimed that “the cyclical upswing underway since mid-2016” was growing stronger, contributing to “the broadest synchronized global growth upsurge since 2010”. By October it felt that while “the global economic expansion remains strong”, it had “become less balanced and with more downside risks.” Now the mood is much more sombre. The IMF’s April 2019 edition of the World Economic Outlook finds that global growth has…
Making hay in the markets C. P. Chandrasekhar
India’s stock markets seem to be riding one more bubble. Between 19th February and 29th March, the Sensex rose by 9.3 per cent. The trend has not been restricted to a few stocks. The S&P BSE 100, which tracks 100 and not just 30 stocks, also rose by 9.8 per cent between those dates. In fact, financial year 2018-19 as a whole seems to have been a good period for punters, with the Sensex outperforming many global markets. Among the explanations doing the rounds is that confident of a return of a market-friendly, Modi-led government, investors are making hay in…
The Political Economy of the Modi Regime C. P. Chandrasekhar
At the end of its five-year term, the NDA government’s claim that the Indian economy has experienced rapid growth during its tenure sounds shallow. The GDP numbers many observers argue are wrong and possibly fabricated. The GDP figures have since 2011-12 been computed using some new data sources and a changed methodology, showing the economy in much better light when compared with the series with 2004-05 as base. But the change was so drastic that for the official statistical agency could not for long put out a “back series” that allowed comparison of performance across time. Scepticism about the GDP…
Housing Market Mayhem C. P. Chandrasekhar
Late in February 2019, the GST Council, prodded by the Centre, decided to modify Goods and Services Tax rates applicable to the housing sector. The declared intention was to reduce prices that home buyers would have to pay for their property. The modification, which takes effect as of 1 April 2019, involves doing away with input tax credit for residential property construction for sale and significantly reducing the GST rate applicable at the final stage of sale of housing. At present the GST rates stand at 12 per cent for normal residential housing and at 8 per cent for “affordable…
The use and misuse of Economics C. P. Chandrasekhar
When the final session, prior to the impending election, of the current Parliament ended in February, high on the list of the unfinished business of the Modi-led NDA government was its aggressive effort to rewrite the laws regulating wages and employment conditions of workers in India. While opposition by workers’ movements, trade unions (including those aligned to the ruling BJP), the parliamentary opposition and democratic opinion has managed to stall the effort, it is more than likely to be revived by future governments. The conservative legislative push of the NDA was presented not just as an effort at rationalisation that…
The Skewed Structure of India’s Bond Market C. P. Chandrasekhar and Jayati Ghosh
India’s efforts to activate its corporate debt market, not least by periodically raising the ceiling on investment by foreign portfolio investors in corporate bonds, are yet to succeed. Mobilisation of capital through the issue of corporate bonds has just about crept up to 4.4 per cent of GDP (Chart 1). Though that is much larger than the 0.2 per cent of GDP for mobilisation through new equity issues, it is way short of the figure (varying from 15 to 50 per cent) for most similarly placed emerging markets. Relative to the size of its economy, India’s corporate bond market is…
Neither Interim, nor Substantial C. P. Chandrasekhar
In a pre-election budget speech filled with propaganda about the supposed developmental achievements of the Modi government, substitute Finance Minister Piyush Goyal read out a text that both window-dressed the revised estimates and violated all norms that should apply to an Interim Budget. Principally, the speech lays out three sets of changes on the expenditure side with the hope clearly of winning votes at election time: one to provide for a Rs. 6,000 crore cash transfer in a year to “landholding” farmers with holding size upto 2 hectares; a contributory pension scheme for unorganised workers with monthly income upto Rs.…
The Strange form of “Disinvestment” C. P. Chandrasekhar
As the term of the current NDA government nears its end, with signs of popular dissatisfaction over its performance on the economic front, the urge to ramp up expenditure to woo the electorate intensifies. But a number of factors have combined to render that task difficult, with the failure of the government’s misplaced disinvestment programme being among the most important. Disinvestment receipts are crucial to the government this year for two reasons. First, while direct tax collections in 2018-9 are according to official figures on track to reaching targets, indirect tax collections have fallen short after implementation and periodic revision…
The failed promise of employment C. P. Chandrasekhar
As election 2019 approaches, the Modi government, damaged by agrarian distress, is also being challenged by evidence that its record on employment generation has been extremely poor. To recall, in its campaign during the 2014 election which brought it back to power, the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) promised to create 10 million jobs every year. The best source of information on employment we currently have is the privately conducted (and heavily priced) Consumer Pyramids Household Survey undertaken by the Centre for Monitoring the Indian Economy (CMIE). These figures are available from 2016 from a sample of more than 170,000…