Trade and development report update: April 2024
The report forecasts global economic growth to 2.6% in 2024, barely above the 2.5% threshold commonly associated with a recessionary phase. The report says the prevailing focus on inflation overshadows
Economy
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Band aid, in wrong place
No one asks the farmerBringing up babus With its Rs 600 billion farm loan waiver in the current budget, the government has applied some band aid to the financial haemorrhaging of India's farmers. It is another matter that the hurt is at some other place. The farmer has difficulty in obtaining cheap and reliable credit; various laws prevent him from selling his produce at the most competitive prices in the open market; there is no reliable advice available to him on how best to tend his fields in an economical manner; existing farming techniques, guided by corporate interests, continue to suck life out of the soil without replenishing it and there is no system of health security in the villages. On all these counts, the government has yet to show even minimal movement. The farm loan waiver gives the impression that farmers do not wish to repay their loans. This is a serious misrepresentation of the ground reality. According to figures from the NABARD, only some 10 per cent of the farmers default on bank loans. And even then, it is rarely that farming assets are taken away by the banks for failure to pay back loans. The problem for farmers lies in the loans taken from informal sources: moneylender and relatives. Often, the moneylender himself is a prosperous neighbourhood farmer. He gives large loans that are beyond the paying capacity of the borrower. These loans come with exorbitant rates of interest and severe penalties for default. The lender here does not falter in taking away farming assets, including land. After all, this could be a strategy for acquiring more land for himself. The advice of the agriculture minister a few days ago at Mumbai that farmers need not pay back loans taken from
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Aam aadmi to ride the auto sector
The real winner is the small car buyer who will have to pay Rs 5,000 to Rs 20,000 less for his purchase.
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Waiver: Pawar begins scoring political points
BUDGET 2008-09 IMPACT The Rs 60,000 crore loan waiver for farmers announced in this year's Budget is being projected as a major achievement of Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar in his stronghold and sugar cane country western Maharashtra. The minister has unleashed a blitzkrieg of advertisements of his Nationalist Congress Party, addressing sugar cane farmers there. On the other hand, Congress leaders in the party stronghold of Vidarbha are on the defensive, even as farmer groups are openly saying that Pawar engineered the package to weaken the Congress in Vidarbha. The political sub-plot to the waiver has once again added to the agony of the dryland farmers who were earlier denied a waiver when the prime minister announced a relief package. The waiver benefits sugar cane and horticulture crops vastly, while the benefits for cotton farmers and those doing unirrigated farming are minimal. For, while loan available for dryland farming is Rs 4,000 an acre, it is Rs 50,000 for irrigated farming, which sugar cane farmers do. Hence the waiver will be a lottery for farmers in western Maharashtra and in Pawar's constituency of Baramati. The advertisements seek to drive the point home. The full page advertisements appearing in Marathi newspapers on March 1, with several pictures of Pawar, trumpet home the fact that the waiver is meant to benefit the sugar cane and horticulture farmers of western Maharashtra rather than the cotton farmers of Vidarbha. Pawar's advertisements in newspaper Sakal's Nagpur edition, for instance, talk about how loans for tractors will be waived. The advertisements in Lokmat and Tarun Bharat, which appeared on March 1, also splashed Pawar's picture and highlighted the waiver saying that loans for pipes, wells, tractors and buying of cattle would be waived. The Sakal advertisement, which says
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Budget bonanza
A few years ago, while delivering the Palkhivala Memorial Lecture in Mumbai on the then Finance Minister Jaswant Singh's Budget, P Chidambaram made the perceptive comment that it was the most unfunded budget in the country's history. There was no provision in the Annual Financial Statement on many new items of expenditure. Now, ironically, it is the turn of Yashwant Sinha to point out how Chidambaram's budget is silent on expenditure on such proposals as debt waiver! Any issue of bonds to banks by way of compensation for debt waiver and relief, especially when staggered over three years, will put them in the same predicament as the oil marketing companies burdened with similar IOUs. The bonds are not likely to qualify for investments to meet the Statutory Liquidity Ratio. In case of depreciation in their values, the banks will face the same problems they experienced a few years ago in adhering to prudential norms. The difficulties are cropping up at a time when the system is in transition to Basel-II norms. There is an ominous suggestion in some official quarters that banks that have already made provisions for the overdues of farm loans may not be given the compensation. It will be unfair to them. The overdue loans will still remain part of the gross non-performing assets of the institutions, reflecting on their soundness. The loan waiver does not solve the problem of farmer distress. The inequity in the definition of marginal or small farmers based only on cultivated holding is obvious. According to the budget document, a marginal farmer is one with a holding up to one hectare and a small farmer is one with holdings between one and two hectares. A farmer with, say, five hectares of rain-fed land in Pali Marwar in Rajasthan is economically in no better condition than one with two hectares with assured irrigation families in Ludhiana in the Punjab. But the former will not be eligible for the waiver. The need for adopting an income criterion for defining the size of farms was discussed in detail in the Reserve Bank of India's Report on the Seventh Follow-Up Rural Credit Survey entitled "The Small Farmers
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Why loan waiver won't stop farmer deaths
MOUNDHALA (BULDANA): His clothes remind me of him,' wails Leelabai, clutching a bundle of clothes in front of the dilapidated structure she calls home, as younger sister Kalabai wipes away her tears
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Punjab may not be able to reap waiver harvest
As the Union Government works out the exact details of the farm loan waiver announced in the Budget, the first concern has been raised by Punjab, which incidentally contributes 50 per cent of the tota
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Govt. to strive for growth with low inflation
Even as there were no easy ways of balancing high economic growth with low inflation, Finance Minister P. Chidambaram on Tuesday said the Government would strive to peg the overall growth rate at near nine per cent while containing the inflation rate at close to four per cent. In his post-Budget interaction with the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) here, Mr. Chidambaram said: "The goal is to have a growth close to nine [per cent] and inflation close to four [per cent]. That is why we assume 13 per cent [nominal] GDP growth.' Pointing out that in this exercise, while the Government sometimes succeeded and also missed the target at other times, he said: "In a country where economy is growing close by over eight per cent, close to nine per cent, there is bound to be some inflation.' Inflation in India, he said, was caused by supply-demand mismatch between food items and the oligopolistic tendencies in some industries. Besides, the growth in money supply was yet another reason which, in a sense, was a reflection of the high growth the country was experiencing. However, to keep the India growth story intact, Mr. Chidambaram pointed to the numerous measures announced in the budget for 2008-09. "I think we have announced a number of measures that are intended to ensure that the growth story is intact... I am betting on your [corporates] growth. I am bullish on your growth. I hope you are as bullish as I am about the growth story,' he said. Projecting that India Inc. would provide Rs. 5,50,000 crore next year by way of taxes, excluding personal income-tax, Mr. Chidambaram noted that while steps had been taken to provide more money to the consumer for spending, the fiscal stimulus to the economy would come from the cuts in excise and customs duties and the Central Sales Tax. "Unless my friend Shubhashis Gangopadhyay [Adviser to Finance Minister] and other economists are hopelessly wrong about their economics, all these make up for the text-book prescription for higher growth,' he said. These measures together, including the across-the-board excise cut from 16 per cent to 14 per cent, were a powerful combination to keep the growth story intact. "I have taken the first step to signal the whole country, especially States, that I prepare to look forward in order to accommodate my financial interests with the final number [for goods and services tax], and you can prepare to accommodate your financial interests with the final number,' Mr Chidambaram said.
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FinMin mulled Rs 5,000-cr guarantee company before farm loan waiver
Prior to announcing the Rs 60,000-crore farm loan waiver package, the finance ministry had toyed with the idea of setting up an Agriculture Credit Guarantee Corporation with a corpus of around Rs 5,000 crore to deal with bad loans. The entity would have insured lenders against borrower defaults with banks making less provisioning for such loans and continuing to offer farm loans. However, the plan was dropped after the amount of the waiver and relief package rose to a massive Rs 60,000 crore. "We then thought of giving direct subsidies to farmers as there will be no leakage in this scheme and the benefits will go directly to farmers,' said a government official. Cooperative banks account for Rs 37,000 crore or about 61 per cent of the Rs 60,000-crore package announced in the Budget. Regional rural banks and scheduled commercial banks account for Rs 12,000 crore and Rs 11,000 crore, respectively. The details of the farm package are likely to be finalised by March 25. As the government will implement this package over a period of three financial years, it may make a provision of up to Rs 25,000 crore in 2008-09. Part of the financial assistance due for restructuring of cooperatives according to the recommendations of the Vaidyanathan Committee is also likely to be part of the package, officials say. Cooperatives and banks may also have to share a little burden in case of default loan accounts, which have been written off for prudential accounting norms.
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PM: Waiver picks up unpaid distress bill
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh today claimed the political credit for making a speech that not only led to a Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) walkout from the Lok Sabha but earned him applause from the Left parties. Days after the government declared it hadn't given up on the Indo-US civil nuclear agreement despite the Left's staunch opposition to it, and Congress President Sonia Gandhi announcing at a party rally in Tripura that the government was not in power because of any favours shown by the Left, the political message of the PM's speech today was: opposition to the BJP was not the Left parties' prerogative. In his speech in reply to the President's address to the joint sitting of Parliament, Singh charged the Opposition with ruining the lives of farmers and giving in to terrorist pressures when it was in power until 2004. Rejecting Opposition charge that the farm loan waiver was announced with an eye on elections, Singh said it was a historic initiative to meet the "unpaid distress bill' left behind by the erstwhile NDA government. "Doubts have been raised about the resources required for this write-off,' he said, referring to questions raised by Leader of Opposition L K Advani and other members asking the government how it could provide the whopping Rs 60,000 crore towards waiver of bank loans to small and marginal farmers. "Let me remind the Leader of the Opposition that what we have done is nothing more than picking up the unpaid distress bill which the NDA government left behind,' Singh said. If bankruptcy is permissible form of business outcome in industry, what is irrational about this waiver, he asked. "It will allow a fresh flow of institutional credit to farmers. It will clean up banks' balance sheets. It will stimulate economic activity in rural areas,' he said. Singh assured the House that the debt relief will be a simple exercise which will be completed by June-end. "It will not be a long drawn affair,' he said. Singh named Opposition leader L K Advani in his speech, leading to a walkout by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its allies.
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Due provision will be made for waiver'
Hitting out at the Bharatiya Janata Party, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Wednesday blamed the previous regime for the agrarian crisis and inflation, and said the UPA government's "unprecedented' initiative to waive farmers' loans was to meet the "unpaid distress bill' left behind by the NDA government. Replying to the discussion in the Lok Sabha on the motion of thanks to the President's address, he said: "We have done nothing more than pick up the unpaid distress bill, which the NDA government had left behind.' It was the distress of the peasantry that brought the United Progressive Alliance to power, while the NDA was talking of