What Urjit Patel can do to help improve India’s investment climate Urjit Patel will take over as Governor of RBI on September 4. Close to 53, he is among the youngest to be appointed to this position. One ho pes this is part of a larger move by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the NDA…
Corporates are heavily dependent on banks to finance their long-term funding requirements. In the lending market, banks enjoy almost complete control. Bank credit was 63% of GDP in FY16. However, with Indian banks undergoing rigorous balance sheet restructuring and Basel III enhancing capital requirements, bank credit is likely to get conservative. Indian retail investors have…
In 2012, the state of Minnesota in the US briefly banned free online education. That’s right, a government thought it was a bad thing for people to educate themselves for free. The government essentially banned universities from offering classes online without taking permission from the regulatory body which included a registration fee. We in India…
Credit rating agencies (CRA) in India suffer from chronic problems in multiple dimensions. They work towards maximizing CRA shareholder value by way of increasing revenues from issuers, while trying to provide independent ratings for the consumption of investors. As that may sound convoluted, let us take a step back and understand why rating agencies have…
The Government of India has set an ambitious target of generating 100GW of energy from solar and 60GW from wind energy sources by 2022. As of 31 March 2016, the corresponding figures stood at 6.76GW and 26.7GW respectively. Unfortunately, renewable energy is more capital intensive than coal and financing this push will require ~$160 billion…
It comes as no surprise that after Cholamandalam, Dilip Sanghvi along with IDFC Bank and Telenor Financial Services have decided to give up their interest to start a payment bank. The entities that were granted an in-principle approval for starting a payments bank were given a year to launch the bank and in turn gain…
Rural tourism, is an unexplored territory in the landscape of Indian tourism. Considering around 74 per cent of the population resides in rural India, an engaging platform focused on organized rural tourism could generate both, high revenue and employment. According to the Ministry of Tourism, ‘any form of tourism that showcases the rural life, art,…
Any explanations for why should Indian stock market indices should be positively correlated to global oil price? As Brent crosses $50 per barrel our NIFTY crosses 8,100. Oil prices are rising because of the decline in shale oil production in the US and the biggest drop in non-OPEC oil production since 1992. Thus it is…
Defence procurement is conducted from three sources, foreign entities, defence public sectors undertakings (DPSUs) and the domestic private sector. The domestic private sector is comprised of large players (like Tata, Mahindra, Larsen and Tubro, Bharat Forge) and SMEs. Imports from abroad constitute almost 60% share of defence procurements. DPSUs and Ordnance Factories fulfil anywhere between…
Potential: “If GSPC successfully pumps out even the 1.05 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, it will generate a revenue of $6.6 billion.” The KG basin. It is important to keep a hawk eye on government operations to prevent corruption and scams. However, it is destructive to try and generate a scam where there is…
It is neither fair nor perhaps useful to evaluate a government at the end of two years of a five-year term. The ruling leadership could well have consciously initiated a spate of schemes and programs for two reasons. First, to galvanize a somnolent administration and shake it out of its lethargy and inertia. Second, the…
In response to the financial crisis, banks improved their credit standards and one of the silver linings of the crisis has been an increase in financial creativity in how people raise money. Its not very clear if this is temporary or a structural change in the financial system, however, it has left certain profitable niches…