Reduction in CAD
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Reduction in CAD, pick up in exports improve India’s external sector: RBI
The Reserve Bank today ruled out any major impact on domestic markets by the US Fed’s tapering its monthly bond-buying programme from later this week.
The apex bank said that India’s external sector has improved with reduction in Current Account Defecit, CAD and a pick up in exports.
In its eighth Financial Stability Report released today, RBI said, external sector risks have been reduced considerably and the effect of the tapering on the economy is expected to be limited and short-lived.
On the occasion of releasing the Report in Mumbai, RBI Governor Raghuram Rajan warned on the high inflation as a hurdle for easy money policy. He said the outlook for the country’s economy has improved, with export growth regaining momentum, but growth is still weak.
Mr. Rajan also warned against the rising tide of bad loans saying risks to the banking system have increased since June this year.
The RBI report said that CAD is expected to be less than 3 per cent of the GDP during the current financial year as the country’s external position appears to be manageable and reserves seem adequate.
CAD shot up to an all-time high of 4.8 per cent last year on account of a heavy trade deficit and higher gold imports.
The tapering, from January, of the USD 85-billion monthly bond buying programme by US Fed to prop the American economy, has given India time to replenish forex reserves and rein in high CAD, which was at 3.05 per cent in first half of this fiscal (2013-14) as against 4.8 per cent last fiscal.
The US Fed announced this month that it would cut back on bond buying by 10 billion dollar to 75 billion dollar a month following improvement in the country’s economy.
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30122013
Mumbai International Film Festival, 3rd – 9th February 2014
Director General: Films Division & Director, Mumbai International Film Festival would address a Press Conference in Delhi on 30-12-2013 at PIB Conference Hall at 2:30 p.m. regarding the Mumbai International Film Festival, being organised by the Ministry from 3rd – 9th February 2014
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AAP’s fulfill promise of 700 litres of free water
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Delhi Jal Board meet with Arvind Kejriwal at his residence ends. AAP’s promise of 700 litres of water will be given free to each household in Delhi, while anything above 700 litres will be charged.
Free water upto 700 Ltrs was one of the promises made in AAP’s manifesto,next on their agenda is reducing electricity charges.
CEO of the Delhi Jal board says that 20 kilo litre of water (700 litres) per month to customers will be provided to domestic customers who have functional water meters. This will be provided from January 1, 2014 to March 30. To encourage water conservation, consumers who use more than 20 kilo litres per month will be charged for the entire consumption.
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Financial Stability Report December 2013: RBI
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Financial Stability Report December 2013: RBI
The Reserve Bank of India today released the Financial Stability Report (FSR) December 2013, the eighth in the series against the backdrop of a mild positive market reaction to the announcement of tapering in the US Federal Reserves’ bond purchase programme from January 2014. The commencement of the taper should signal a calibrated return to normal liquidity and credit conditions in the global markets and also better pricing of risk. This will mean a repricing of certain assets with consequent volatility. Efforts during the past few months have been directed to make the Indian economy more resilient to the ultimate withdrawal of liquidity from the system and less reliant on unstable external capital for growth. The FSR aims to create awareness about the vulnerabilities in the financial system, to inform about the resilience to stress of the financial institutions and to generally serve as a health check on the financial system.
Highlights of Financial Stability Report by RBI December 2013
Global Economy and Markets–The tapering in the US Federal Reserves’ bond purchase programme is set to begin from January 2014. The initial reaction of financial markets to the announcement has been positive, having been anticipated and therefore factored-in. Fed’s forward guidance on the policy rates has also had a reassuring impact. However, financial market volatility will be conditioned by the pace of tapering going forward. Against this background, the interplay of growth inflation dynamics between advanced economies (AEs) and emerging market and developing economies (EMDEs) (convergence in growth and divergence in inflation) may increase vulnerabilities for EMDEs. To reduce spillovers from AE monetary policy normalisation, EMDEs will have to strengthen national balance-sheets. High global liquidity amid persistently low interest rates in AEs has been pushing up asset prices.
Domestic Economy and Markets– The delay in tapering allowed India to bring about adjustment in the current account deficit (CAD) and build buffers by replenishing its foreign exchange reserves. However, macro-economic adjustment is far from complete, with persistence of high inflation amidst growth slowdown. Fall in domestic savings and relatively high fiscal deficit are other major concerns for India . Reviving Fiscal Responsibility legislation and a gradual reduction in government borrowings can complement financial market development and improve confidence in the economy.
Against the backdrop of a large CAD and dependence on volatile capital flows to fund it, the Indian rupee had depreciated following the Fed’s May 2013 indication of possible tapering in its bond purchase programme. There have been significant improvements on the external front since then, some measures initiated by the Government of India (GoI) and the Reserve Bank. The current account deficit (CAD) during Q2 2013-14 fell sharply to 1.2% of GDP from 4.9% during Q1 2013-14 due to decline in the trade deficit. From July 2013 onwards exports have grown faster than imports. The CAD is expected to be less than 3% of GDP during the current financial year. The increased resilience of the Indian financial markets is evidenced by the positive reaction to the announcement of the commencement of tapering from January 2014 by the Fed.
Corporate performance continues to be weighed down by boom period expansions and excess capacities, amid shifting asset composition towards financial investments. House prices and outstanding loans for retail housing by housing finance companies have grown relatively fast during the last few years. Inadequate social security coverage in India against a backdrop of changing demographics will pose challenges for expanding the pension system given the fiscal constraints. The NPS (National Pension System) was created to serve the Government employees and private sector workers.
Financial Institutions: Soundness and Resilience
Scheduled Commercial Banks–The risks to the banking sector have further increased during the past half-year. All major risk dimensions captured in the Banking Stability Indicator show increase in vulnerabilities in the banking sector. Banking Stability Measures, based on co-movements in banks’ equity prices, also indicate that the distress dependencies within the banking system have risen during this period.
Contagion Risks in the Banking Sector–Network tools have been used to assess impact of contagion due to risk of credit concentration. Failure of a major corporate or a major corporate group could trigger a contagion in the banking system due to exposures of a large number of banks to such corporates. The analysis shows that interconnectedness in the banking sector could cause losses due to contagion, over and above the direct losses on account of the failure of large corporate groups.
Trends in Credit and Deposit Growth–In the recent quarters, credit growth has exceeded the growth in deposits. As a result, there has been a significant rise in the incremental C-D ratio.
Asset Quality Concerns–Asset quality continues to be a major concern for Scheduled Commercial Banks (SCBs). The key aspects of deterioration in asset quality are:
- A rising trend in Risk Weighted Assets (RWA) to total assets along with declining trend in Coefficient of Variation (CV) indicates that the rise in proportion of risky assets in the total assets of SCBs is becoming more broad-based.
- The Gross Non-performing Assets (GNPAs) ratio of SCBs as well as their restructured standard advances ratio have increased. Therefore, the total stressed advances ratio rose significantly to 10.2% of total advances as at end September 2013 from 9.2% of March 2013.
- The largest contribution to stressed advances comes from the PSU banks.
- The ‘medium and large’ sized industries contributed more towards stressed advances than ‘micro & small’ sized industries.
- Industries recorded the highest share in restructured standard advances and with relatively high GNPAs contributed the highest share of stressed advances in the banks’ loans portfolio followed by Services. Retail segment fared much better in terms of GNPA and restructured standard advances ratios.
- Five sectors, namely, Infrastructure, Iron & Steel, Textiles, Aviation and Mining together contribute 24% of total advances of SCBs, and account
for around 53% of their total stressed advances.
Stress Tests–Macro stress tests on credit risk suggest that if the adverse macroeconomic conditions persist, the credit quality of commercial banks could deteriorate further. However, under improved conditions, the present trend in credit quality may reverse during the second half of 2014-15 with the GNPA ratio expected to rise initially to around 4.6% by September 2014 from 4.2% as at end September 2013, which may subsequently improve to 4.4% by March 2015.
Systemic Risk Survey–According to the results of Reserve Bank’s latest Systemic Risk Survey, conducted during October 2013, global risks and domestic macro-economic risks were perceived to be the two most important factors affecting the stability of Indian financial system. On the domestic macro-economic front, deterioration in economic outlook is considered to be the most critical. Risk from domestic inflation, corporate leverage and household savings have also increased marginally. On the other hand, risks arising from CAD, fiscal, sovereign downgrade and infrastructure were perceived to have receded.
Regulation of Financial Markets, Institutions and Infrastructure
Too-Big-To-Fail and Shadow Banking–India stands committed to the implementation of the global regulatory reforms agenda and has made considerable progress on this front. Although firms and markets are beginning to adjust to the regulatory approach towards ending too-big-to-fail (TBTF), recent research indicates continued expectation of sovereign support to such institutions. In India , the process of identification of financial conglomerates and their joint supervision/ regulation have received a lot of attention. Some global reform measures, e.g. those related to shadow banking may need to be adopted selectively, based on their relevance to the domestic financial system.
Money Market Mutual Funds–Due to the interconnectedness with banks, liquidity pressure is felt by the money market mutual funds (MMMFs) whenever redemption requirements of banks are large and simultaneous. Regulatory measures taken to reduce the degree of interconnectedness seem to have been successful in reducing the liquidity risk in the system.
Financial Benchmarks –Although there have been no major instances of manipulation of market rates in India’s domestic markets, the Reserve Bank has constituted a committee to conduct a review of the systems and procedures in place with regard to major financial benchmarks.
Some Issues in Indian Financial Markets–Action to create central repositories for the banking sector, corporate bond market and insurance sector has been initiated. This move is expected to break the information asymmetry in those markets. India ’s domestic markets for derivatives have not taken off due to the absence of some of the basic building blocks and efforts are on to address these issues. It has also been observed that the equity prices of the companies in which the promoters had pledged significant portions of their shares, are relatively more volatile than the broader market during times of correction.
Payment and Settlement Systems–The payment and settlement system infrastructure in the country continued to perform without any major disruptions.
Financial Stability and Development Council (FSDC) and its Sub Committee–The Financial Stability and Development Council (FSDC) and its Sub Committee deliberated on various aspects that impinge on financial stability -macroeconomic scenario, both global and domestic and the developments in financial markets.
Warm regards,
Dr. S P Sharma
Chief Economist
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‘Civil society recommends rejection of Parliamentary Committee report on amendment of RTI Act
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New Delhi, Dec. 30, 2013: The amendment made in the RTI Act by the Parliament that proposed to keep political parties outside its ambit has been approved by the Parliamentary Committee, entrusted with the task of reviewing it despite much opposition from civil society organizations and citizens.
In a landmark decision on June 3, 2013, the Central Information Commission (CIC) pronounced that the political parties (INC, BJP, CPM, CPI, NCP and BSP) are public authorities under section 2(h) of the RTI Act. The Government brought an amendment to the RTI Act excluding political parties from its ambit.
However, due to mounting public pressure, the Parliament chose to refer the Bill to the Parliamentary Committee, which invited suggestions on the proposed amendment to the RTI Act. ADR was one of the organizations which made its submission apart from NCPRI, MKSS, Subhash Chandra Agarwal and Shailesh Gandhi among others. All of them strongly objected to the amendment.
Rejecting Parliamentary Committee’s nod to the amendment, Prof. Jagdeep Chhokar, one of founder members and trustees of ADR, said, “The committee has not given any logical reasoning for its recommendation in its report. Excluding political parties from RTI Act is unconstitutional. It is odd to argue that transparency is good for all state organs but not for political parties, which in reality control all the vital organs of the state.”
Expressing a similar view, Shailesh Gandhi, ex-CIC, stated, “The standing committee doesn’t appear to have taken into account objections to the RTI amendments submitted by the civil society organizations. No arguments have been given in the report which indicate that the committee has noted our objections. It is obvious that no reasons were taken to counter our views before suggesting construing citizen’s fundamental rights.”
Mr Subhash Agarwal stated, ”Report of Parliamentary standing committee recommending that CIC-verdict holding political parties being covered by RTI Act is not justified because according to the committee it was not intent of legislature to cover political parties under the transparency Act. There are many bodies claiming not covered under RTI Act but are declared public-authorities by Information Commissions and even endorsed by High Courts as public-authorities. None of such bodies were ‘intended’ specifically by the legislature to be covered under RTI Act. Surprisingly, the committee has overruled Attorney General’s advice that any legislative step against CIC-verdict may be struck down by courts. It is not appropriate that it may become compulsory to involve precious time of Supreme Court in every matter to get things done in public interest.”
Anjali Bhardwaj from NCPRI also questioned the Parliamentary Committee’s approval to the Bill, saying, “NCPRI has consistently held that the proposed amendment to RTI Act is unconstitutional. Political Parties ought to be covered as public authorities under the RTI Act. There is no rationale for people who made the law to keep themselves out of its ambit. We feel there are adequate exemptions under section 8 of the Act. The law doesn’t need any amendment.”
Justifying its decision to amend the Bill the Government said – The political parties are neither established nor constituted by or under the Constitution or by any other law made by Parliament.
An authority or body does not require to be established or constituted by or under the constitution or any other law made by the Parliament, to be called a public authority. According to Section 2(h) of RTI Act, an organisation that is ‘substantially financed, directly or indirectly by funds provided by the appropriate Government’ can also fall under the category of public authority.
The Government also claimed – “There are already provisions in the Representation of the People Act, 1951 as well as in the Income-tax Act, 1961 which deal with the transparency in the financial aspects of political parties and their candidates.”
However, an analysis by Association for Democratic Reform (ADR) of Income Tax returns for six National Political Parties and the statements filed by them with the Election Commission show that over 75% of the funds cannot be traced and are from ‘unknown’ sources.
Another point made by the government was – Declaring a political party as public authority under the RTI Act would hamper its smooth internal working. Further, the political rivals may misuse the provisions of RTI Act.
The above-mentioned claim of the Government does not hold much ground as the RTI Act has enough built in protection in the form of the section 8- “Exemption from disclosure of information.”
The Parliamentary Committee observed that none of the six political parties, who happened to be respondent to CIC Order of 3rd June, 2013, has challenged the order in the higher judiciary which is a case of misrepresentation of a clear provision of law.”
However, the correct and the established practice for a party aggrieved by a decision made by the CIC, is to go to the High Court to challenge the CIC’s decision. If this is a case of ‘misrepresentation of a clear provision of law’ there is no necessity of an amendment of the law.
Contacts:
Journalist Helpline:
+91-8010394248
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Prof Jagdeep Chhokar
IIM Ahmedabad (Retd.)
Founder Member,
National Election Watch &
Association for Democratic Reforms
+91 9999620944
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Prof Trilochan Sastry
IIM Bangalore
Founder Member,
National Election Watch &
Association for Democratic Reforms
+91 9448353285
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Mr. Anil Verma
National Election Watch &
Association for Democratic Reforms
+91 8826479910
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Mr. Anurag Mittal
National Coordinator
National Election Watch &
Association for Democratic Reforms
+91 9811108914
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Association for Democratic Reforms
“Kiwanis Centre”, 4th Floor,
B-35, Qutub Institutional Area
(Near Rockland Hospital)
New Delhi-110 016
M: +91 8010394248
T: +91 11 41654200/01/02/03
F: 011 4609 4248
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Indefinite Fast by Anna’s followers from Dec 10th to 18 Dec 2013 at Jantar Mantar New Delhi
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Fast by Anna’s followers from Dec 10th to 18 Dec 2013 at Jantar Mantar New Delhi
At stone throw distance from Jantar Mantar, the AAP celebrated congregated at jantar mantar but no officials from AAP paid courtesy visit at the fasting dignitaries in support of Anna’s..All calls for AAp to support and respect Anna is hollow.
Sanjeet Singh Bhalothia · 133 followers
ये है केजरीवाल की असलियत…
अंग्रेजी अखबार ‘पॉयनियर’ में प्रकाशित एक खबर के मुताबिक डच यानी नीदरलैंड दूतावास अपनी ही एक एनजीओ ‘हिवोस’ के जरिए नरेंद्र मोदी की गुजरात सरकार को अस्थिर करने में लगे विभिन्नओ भारतीय एनजीओ को अप्रैल 2008 से 2012 के बीच लगभग 13 लाख यूरो, मतलब करीब सवा नौ करोड़ रुपए की फंडिंग कर चुकी है। इसमें एक अरविंद केजरीवाल का एनजीओ भी शामिल है। ‘हिवोस’ को फोर्ड फाउंडेशन भी फंडिंग करती है।डच एनजीओ ‘हिवोस’ दुनिया के अलग-अलग हिस्सों में केवल उन्हीं एनजीओ को फंडिंग करती है,जो अपने देश व वहां के राज्यों में अमेरिका व यूरोप के हित में राजनैतिक अस्थिरता पैदा करने की क्षमता को साबित करते हैं। इसके लिए मीडिया हाउस को भी जबरदस्त फंडिंग की जाती है। एशियाई देशों की मीडिया को फंडिंग करने के लिए अमेरिका व यूरोपीय देशों ने ‘पनोस’ नामक संस्था का गठन कर रखा है। दक्षिण एशिया में इस समय ‘पनोस’ के करीब आधा दर्जन कार्यालय काम कर रहे हैं। ‘पनोस’ में भी फोर्ड फाउंडेशन का पैसा आता है। माना जा रहा है कि अरविंद केजरीवाल के मीडिया उभार के पीछे इसी ‘पनोस’ के जरिए ‘फोर्ड फाउंडेशन’ की फंडिंग काम कर रही है। ‘सीएनएन-आईबीएन’ व ‘आईबीएन-7’ चैनल के प्रधान संपादक राजदीप सरदेसाई ‘पॉपुलेशन काउंसिल’ नामक संस्था के सदस्य हैं, जिसकी फंडिंग अमेरिका की वही ‘रॉकफेलर ब्रदर्स’ करती है जो ‘रेमॉन मेग्सेसाय’ पुरस्कार के लिए ‘फोर्ड फाउंडेशन’ के साथ मिलकर फंडिंग करती है। सच क्या है ये तो आप ही जानो भगवान जी बस मेरे देश को बचा लेना …!! जय श्री राम !
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