Wednesday, May 12, 2010

Soaring Chinese Imports and Twin Deficits Worry India

India is continuing to run large current account and trade deficits. India's trade deficit was an estimated $86.6 billion in April- January 2009-2010, according to media reports. The Reserve Bank of India said the nation's current account deficit widened to $29.8 billion in fiscal 2009, compared with a deficit of $17 billion in prior year.



The nation’s capital account continued to be negative for the second quarter in a row. The gauge of investment flows into and out of the country showed a shortfall of $4.44 billion in the three months to 31 March, compared with a net inflow of $26.5 billion a year earlier, RBI said.

India's government has sent letters to the country's telecom companies ordering them not to buy equipment from Huawei, ZTE, and several other Chinese companies due to security risks, according to a report in Businessweek. A few weeks ago, the Wall Street Journal reported that there was a similar move by Delhi to limit China's growing role in building India's power sector.

Growing Chinese Imports:
India's imports from China expanded 19 per cent and stood at US$ 32.49 billion in 2008-09, while exports were at US$ 9.35 billion. India's trade deficit with China is expected to grow larger this year, a trend India considers alarming given the nature of imports that go into India's essential infrastructure of power generation and telecommunications networks.

Power Sector:

Chinese are now supplying equipment for about 25% of the new generating capacity India is adding to its national grid, up from almost nothing a few years ago. There are thousands of skilled Chinese expatriates at Indian plant sites, along with Chinese chefs, Chinese television and ping pong.

Telecom Sector:
India is already the biggest export market for China's two leading telecom equipment manufacturers, Huawei Technologies and ZTE, as both companies have focused on India in recent years. As India has grown to the world's No. 2 mobile phone market in recent years, its imports of Chinese handsets have soared.



Unlike China, India lacks the necessary industrial and manufacturing base for greater self reliance in infrastructure equipment and defense armaments. India also runs large current account deficits while China is enjoying large surpluses strengthening its economic position in the world.

Defense Equipment:
India is overwhelmingly dependent on foreign imports, mainly Russian and Israeli, for about 70 per cent of its defense requirement, especially for critical military products and high-end defense technology, according to an Indian defense analyst Dinesh Kumar. Kumar adds that "India’s defense ministry officially admits to attaining only 30 to 35 per cent self-reliance capability for its defense requirement. But even this figure is suspect given that India’s self-reliance mostly accrues from transfer of technology, license production and foreign consultancy despite considerable investment in time and money".


On the same theme, Russian newspaper Kommersant reported that "India has had little success with military equipment production, and has had problems producing Russian Su-30MKI fighter jets and T-90S tanks, English Hawk training jets and French Scorpene submarines."

On India's perennial dependence on imports, here's how blogger Vijainder Thakur sees India's loose meaning of "indigenous" Smerch and other imports:

"The Russians will come here set up the plant for us and supply the critical manufacturing machinery. Indian labor and technical management will run the plant which will simply assemble the system. Critical components and the solid propellant rocket motor fuel will still come from Perm Powder Mill. However, bureaucrats in New Delhi and the nation as a whole will be happy. The Smerch system will be proudly paraded on Rajpath every republic day as an indigenous weapon system.

A decade or so down the line, Smerch will get outdated and India will negotiate a new deal with Russia for the license production of a new multiple rocket system for the Indian Army.

China will by then have developed its own follow up system besides having used the solid propellant motors to develop other weapon systems and assist its space research program."


India does export some armaments but its modest record of producing and exporting weapon systems is evident from the fact that India’s defense annual exports averaged only US$ 88 million between 2006-07 and 2008-09. By contrast, Pakistan exported $300 million worth of military hardware and munitions last year.

Alternatives:

India is looking for alternative sources for critical imports to reduce its dependence on the Chinese and Russians. But it faces an uphill task with Chinese imports in particular. China has become the biggest and the most efficient factory for the world's largest American, European and Japanese companies. Even if it does manage to find non-Chinese sources, India will have to pay much higher prices for such imports. And these imports may still contain crucial Chinese components which dominate the international supply chain for most non-Chinese companies, continuing its dependence on the Chinese.

On the defense side, India has begun to diversify away from Russia. Israelis have become major suppliers to India, and the US and Europeans are now bidding to sell military hardware to India. Both Israeli and Western equipment carries significantly higher price tags than imports from Russia.

Summary:

In spite of Gandhi's Swadeshi movement and Indian policy of developing self-reliance, the nation remains heavily dependent on imports from China for its critical infrastructure, and its growing appetite for weapons systems on Russia and Israel. These growing imports are fueling India's current account deficits, and adding to its paranoia with regard to the rise of China. In response, Indian government is acting to reduce dependence on Chinese imports, a move that will likely to add further to its trade imbalance because of the higher costs of imports from non-Chinese and non-Russian sources.

Related Links:

India-Israel Military Relations

Pakistan's Military Production

BRIC, Chindia, and the "Indian Miracle"

India's "Indigenous" Weapons

Pakistan's Telecom Boom

India's Growing Defense Budget

50 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi,

Companies wants to prove that they are indian and they want to sell their product in india.

They are ready to be open for inspection and audit by india. However minister jairam was asked to shut his mouth when he express that china is not a threat to india.

No country is self reliant and need not be self reliant. Why reinvent the wheel if it is available easily.

Democracy of india is its curse and boon. Everything takes its sweet own time. for example china could bring the population growth rate from 2.5 to 0.5 but india is it around 1.5.

Mayraj said...

Not to mention other items like Saris!
India, like many countries has a trade imbalance with China. China has imbalance with only those countries whose raw materials it uses it seems..

Anonymous said...

Haq saab why do you write more on India than Pakistan?

power equipment:
By 2012 we intend to have 30,000 MW per annum equipment production in India.BHEL itself will have 15000MW PER ANNUM capacity by the end of this year.

The reason we banned chinese equipment is because we wanna support our own power equipment industry because the Chinese have a GLUT of power equipment which they sell at firesale prices i.e dumping.

Defence:
Navy will be self sufficient in the 2020 timeframe we already build all our surface ships on our territory right upto aircraft carriers so no more orders to foreign shipyards.The gorshkov will probably be the last foreign built surface ship.

Submarines should be indeginous by 2015 we are building scorpene and arihant class subs on our territory with French Russian assistance and will launch own designs by 2015.

Airforce:
Self sufficient in helicopters ALH,LCH,LOH...

Licence produce Su 30mki from raw materials on Indian territory.

Plans for MTA,PAK FA,NGFA etc etc in full swing.

This is in contrast to screw driver assembly of JF-17 with avionics from China and engine from Russia.

....need i continue?

Riaz Haq said...

Anon: "By 2012 we intend to have 30,000 MW per annum equipment ....
...
Navy will be self sufficient in the 2020 timeframe we already build all our surface ships on our territory right upto aircraft carriers /...Submarines should be indeginous by 2015 we are building scorpene and arihant class subs on our territory with French Russian assistance and will launch own designs by 2015."

What you offer is all about future hope, not current reality.

I think the Russian Kommerant has it right when it says: "India has had little success with military equipment production, and has had problems producing Russian Su-30MKI fighter jets and T-90S tanks, English Hawk training jets and French Scorpene submarines."

And here's how blogger Vijainder Thakur sees India's loose meaning of "indigenous" Smerch and other imports:

The Russians will come here set up the plant for us and supply the critical manufacturing machinery. Indian labor and technical management will run the plant which will simply assemble the system. Critical components and the solid propellant rocket motor fuel will still come from Perm Powder Mill. However, bureaucrats in New Delhi and the nation as a whole will be happy. The Smerch system will be proudly paraded on Rajpath every republic day as an indigenous weapon system.

A decade or so down the line, Smerch will get outdated and India will negotiate a new deal with Russia for the license production of a new multiple rocket system for the Indian Army.

China will by then have developed its own follow up system besides having used the solid propellant motors to develop other weapon systems and assist its space research program.

Anonymous said...

Sir Middle class - does not simply sit on income - it consumes as well. Shall we discuss consumption statistics?? Since these are ratios, total volume does not make a difference.

Television per thousand People - India has 3 times compared to Pakistan.
Cars per Capita - India has twice as compared to Pakistan.
Education: India has more than 3 times people going for higher education than Pakistan.

And Pakistan has half the saving rate compared to India. So all these commodities are purchased and still Indians on an average save twice of what Pakistanis do.... What does your common sense say to this??

As for your only argument, why dont we look at a country like South Africa with per capita Income of over $10,000(PPP), still about 50% of the population lives below $2 per day. Or for Brazil - Again PCI over 10,000 and 35% of population lives below $2 per day.

Your line of reasoning does not appeal to common sense. If we were to determine number of people over $3650 per year, we need not the average but median atleast to determine the clustering.

Riaz Haq said...

Diplomat Bharakumar Op Ed on Iran-India contd:

Russia and China, therefore, have complementary interests in shepherding Iranian energy exports to the Asian market. How is India placed in the energy equations? On balance, India in no way benefits out of the US-Iran standoff and, in fact, has a great deal to lose as regional tensions prevail in a region which forms its extended neighborhood. The Iran nuclear issue potentially can complicate the US-India strategic partnership as New Delhi will be firmly opposed to any use of force in the resolution of the problem.
Equally, the bottom line is that Iran is a major source of energy supplies for the expanding Indian economy. In geopolitical terms, a leap of faith uncluttered by the debris in the India-Pakistan relationship will dictate that the Iran gas pipeline project offers a rare opportunity for New Delhi to make its western neighbor a stakeholder in regional cooperation. Even at the height of the Cold War with nuclear armies preparing for Armageddon, pipelines criss-crossed the Iron Curtain. Alas, the Indian strategic community has a closed mind, as things stand, when it comes to developing a matrix of regional cooperation that even remotely includes Pakistan.

India's diplomatic ingenuity lies in working on the US thinking to persuade it to become a partner in the Iran pipeline project. The prospect offers a "win-win" situation. Iran doesn't hide its panache for Big Oil. The US has stakes in India-Pakistan normalization. India and Pakistan's energy markets offer massive business for American oil companies. The US involvement acts as a guarantee for the pipeline. Least of all, Washington too wishes to make Tehran a stakeholder in regional stability.

New Delhi should closely study Turkey's motivations on the Iran nuclear issue. Turkey has interests almost similar to India's and its supple diplomacy enables it to astutely position itself for the day when the US-Iran standoff dissipates. Turkey estimates that Iran is a neighbor (although they have had a troubled relationship) while the US is a key North Atlantic Treaty Organization ally and any midwifery in the inevitable US-Iran rapprochement becomes a strategic asset for Ankara's growing stature as a regional power.

Indian diplomacy has lately made some interesting moves toward Iran, beginning with Foreign Secretary Nirupama Rao's visit to Tehran in February. The desire to craft a fresh approach is also evident in External Affairs Minister S M Krishna's consultations this week in Tehran. The path is strewn with thorns, as the Iranians harbor a deep sense of hurt about India's stance at the IAEA votes. Therefore, as the US's tug-of-war with Iran intensifies, New Delhi faces the challenge of not treading on Tehran's sensitivities all over again.

On the whole, Indian policy is principled, especially its line that the IAEA ought to be in the driving seat rather than a cabal of states with dubious intentions. But New Delhi is lurking in the shadows in a blissful state of masterly inactivity.

India should openly join hands with Turkey and Brazil in opposing the need for a continued push for UN sanctions against Iran. No doubt, the diplomatic initiative by Turkey and Brazil creates an altogether new situation and Indian diplomacy should grasp its importance and seize its potentials.

Riaz Haq said...

India is continuing to run large fiscal and trade deficits. India's trade deficit was an estimated $86.6 billion in April- January 2009-2010, according to media reports. The Reserve Bank of India said the nation's current account deficit widened to $29.8 billion in fiscal 2009, compared with a deficit of $17 billion in prior year.

Riaz Haq said...

A recent ilog on Chowk titled "Some code coolies!!!" boasts of India being ranked second in global manufacturing competence in a survey by Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu and the US Council on Competitiveness.

In reality, though, India remains heavily dependent on foreign manufactured imports of basic infrastructure equipment needed in telecom, power, defense sectors etc.

India is continuing to run large current account and trade deficits. India's trade deficit was an estimated $86.6 billion in April- January 2009-2010, according to media reports. The Reserve Bank of India said the nation's current account deficit widened to $29.8 billion in fiscal 2009, compared with a deficit of $17 billion in prior year.

The nation’s capital account continued to be negative for the second quarter in a row. The gauge of investment flows into and out of the country showed a shortfall of $4.44 billion in the three months to 31 March, compared with a net inflow of $26.5 billion a year earlier, RBI said.

Riaz Haq said...

$200 billion is the target for India's exports in 2011, according to ADB, about 20% of it in engineered goods, about the same or slightly more than India's textile exports.

Overall, India imports most of its infrastructure machinery (power, telecom, construction equipment, etc) and defense armament and runs huge trade deficits. An example is a recent $10 billion contract by Reliance Power to import power plants from China.

India’s current account deficit tripled in the June quarter as imports soared, raising the spectre of volatile currency when the tide of overseas fund flows turns, according to Times of India.

Interest rate differentials between the domestic market and the developed nations raised the external debt too as companies found it beneficial to borrow in dollars. Widening deficit may make the central bank’s job of ensuring stability in the foreign exchange market, inflation and interest rates tough, economists say.

Current account deficit in the June quarter widened to $13.7 billion, from $4.5 billion in the year earlier, a data released by RBI showed. Current account in the balance of payments measures the net position of a country’s exports and imports of goods and services.

Riaz Haq said...

Here are excerpts from a Wall Street Journal report on Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao's visit to New Delhi:

Mr. Wen sought during the visit to strengthen commercial ties with big-ticket investment proposals and a promise to further open China's markets to India.

On Wednesday, Indian and Chinese companies signed more than 40 deals in the power, commodities and telecoms sectors for a combined $16 billion. Many of the deals were Chinese bank financing agreements for large Indian orders of Chinese exports of telecom and power-producing equipment.

During the first 10 months of 2010, China exported goods valued at $32.87 billion to India, but its imports totaled only $17 billion.Mr. Wen reiterated that Beijing will heed New Delhi's request to broaden access of Indian exports such as pharmaceuticals, information technology and agricultural products to shrink India's trade deficit.Mr. Wen also said in his speech to the diplomats that China understands and supports India's desire to play a bigger role at the United Nations, including the Security Council. China has long opposed a permanent seat for India on the council, and Mr. Wen's comments Thursday didn't appear to represent a change to that position. President Barack Obama during a visit to India in November for the first time publicly backed India's inclusion as a permanent member of the Security Council.

India, concerned over its trade deficit of $19 billion last fiscal year, wants better market access for its exports. For now, India's main export to China is iron ore, while it imports large amounts of high-value manufactured goods.

"The two sides agreed to take measures to promote greater Indian exports to China with a view to reduce India's trade deficit," the two countries said in a joint statement.

India-China trade ties have often been rocky, as India continues to impose antidumping duties—the highest by any country at the World Trade Organization last year—against Chinese products, alleging that the prices of some goods are set artificially low.

China has also raised objections to India's stringent regulations in sourcing power and telecommunications equipment, calling them discriminatory.

China and India have shared interests in reform of the council, with both supporting expanded representation of developing countries, Mr. Wen said Thursday.

Riaz Haq said...

Here are some excerpts from a piece by Dost Mittar on Chowk.com comparing China and India:

India’s foreign exchange reserves at $300 Billion are only a fraction of China’s and those, too, are not based on export earnings but due to inward remittances and fickle inflows of institutional investments in its stock markets.

Some analysts, especially Indians, have recently become much more aggressive in their economic forecasts for India and started comparing their country to Tortoise in a race with the Chinese Hare. They have suggested that China has peaked in its growth whereas India is just starting. They claim that India has strong legal and financial institutions which the Chinese lack. They foresee bottlenecks in the growth of China just as India’s potential is beginning to be realized. How far is this a valid hypothesis?

India is expected to invest a trillion dollars in its infrastructure and many countries are vying with each other to get a slice of this large pie. This is the reason why leaders of almost all major countries have visited or due to visit India this year. These investments are likely to generate large employment opportunities directly and many more indirectly, in addition to improving economic prospects of regions which are currently not well served by infrastructure.

India’s economic growth has been largely based on the domestic market. India’s middle class is booming and is now gradually expanding to smaller towns and even rural areas. The telecom revolution has been real and now covers most villages. Television has reached into the hinterland and raised aspirations of rural masses for the kinds of goods and services that they see being enjoyed by the urban middle class. India largely escaped the recent global recession in part due to the strength displayed by consumers in small towns and villages which were not dependent upon IT and other sectors which are closely tied to the global economy. The rural sector now accounts for half of the two-wheelers sold in India and an increasing number even of small cars. However, a relative lack of growth has led to a serious trade deficit for India, which has so far been filled through capital inflows which cannot be relied upon on a long-term basis. High and rising costs of oil imports of petrol, large infrastructure projects and large-scale defense purchases indicate that these imbalances are likely to worsen rather than improve in the coming years.

Riaz Haq said...

Here is a recent Goldman Sachs warning about India's growing current acount deficits being funded by short-term capital inflows:

MUMBAI: India's current account deficit is being increasingly funded by short-term capital inflows rather than more durable foreign direct investment (FDI), posing a risk to external balance and funding of gap, Goldman Sachs said.

"While we remain constructive on India's medium-term growth outlook, the deterioration in external balances represents the biggest risk, in our view, to the Indian growth story, and one that investors should follow very closely," Goldman Sachs wrote in a note on Tuesday.

Goldman estimates the current account deficit to widen to 4 per cent of GDP in the current fiscal year, from 2.9 per cent in the previous year, and further to 4.3 per cent in 2011/12, its highest-ever level.

"Nearly 80 per cent of the capital inflows are non- FDI related. Given the excess spare capacity globally, FDI may remain weak going forward," the note said.

Rising imports due to strong domestic demand and concerns that exports growth may be slow could add to the widening current account gap problem, it said.

India's current account deficit widened sharply to $13.7 billion in the June-quarter, which was around 3.7 per cent of GDP. The deficit was $4.5 billion in the same period year ago.

India's Planning Commission Deputy Chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia said last month that the government expects the current account deficit for 2010/11 to be above 3 per cent and the economy can manage a deficit of 3.0-3.5 per cent of GDP.

Goldman, however, said India's foreign exchange reserves were adequate to counter temporary reversals of capital.

"Yet, the increased reliance on external capital to fund ever-wider current account deficits has increased vulnerability significantly more than before the 2008 crisis," Goldman said.

A reversal of capital inflows, in case of an extended period of risk aversion could lead to a sharp sell-off in currency, bonds, equities and cause a liquidity crunch resulting in a sharp decline in output.

"We flag this more as a risk, than a clear and present danger," the note said.


http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/economy/finance/Indias-current-account-deficit-may-widen-to-a-record-Goldman/articleshow/6935527.cms

Riaz Haq said...

Here's Anil Prasad, the global head of Citigroup's forex and local markets. who believes that foreign investors may be selling Indian equities because they're worried about India's twin deficits. In an interview with CNBC-TV18's Latha Venkatesh, he gave his views on what could possibly be giving foreign investors sleepless nights.

Q: What is the FII point of view - are they scared because of Indian valuations, because of possible inflation or because of all the reports of scams? What is the foreign opinion on Indian stocks now?

A: Fundamentally, what foreigners are focusing on are two major issues. One is the Indian twin deficit - you have a budget and a current account deficit. Most Asian countries have a current account surplus. While they may have a budget deficit, the budget deficit tends to be much smaller. So you have that one big thing that’s hung over the market all year.

In addition, inflation is an issue and it is talked about more and more overseas and clearly the central bank has acted to deal with the inflationary fears but there is a question of have they done enough, does it stall at this level or does it continue to rise. Those are the two big factors on the economic front.

On the political front, the scandal sort of makes investors less confident about the transparency and the governance in the system. That, however, is more temporary on the longer term impact. Investors are still cautious. When you give investors real yields of 6-7% and nominal yields of 9% or even in some cases 9.5%, given where developed world yields are that’s very attractive.

Q: This twin deficit is not a new story at all. We had a decent amount of FII interest but somehow the worries perhaps have surfaced in the more recent past. Is there anything that’s currently niggling and can probably turn the tide in the last couple of weeks?

A: From our analysis, it would appear that for now at least inflation will sort of tapper off as the base case impact starts rolling through. But what really got the market was that we put the sovereign fears in Europe to one side. We said - its okay, things are under control, Greece has been bailed out at least till 2013. Then all of a sudden Ireland happens and when that happened we went back to our old fears.

Then you go back and say - but India does have a twin deficit, doesn’t it and while clearly the budget deficit is improving the current account isn’t. The question is, is it funded by the FDI which as you know is less than it was before. Then you are focusing on portfolio inflows. If you are looking at portfolio inflows and the stock market starts coming down then that’s worrisome.

Riaz Haq said...

Here's a Times of India report on Tejas operaional clearance today:

BANGALORE: After a tortuous journey of 27 years, with over 1,500 flight-tests and almost 3,000% jump in overall developmental costs, the much-touted but long-delayed Tejas Light Combat Aircraft has finally taken the first step towards induction as a supersonic fighter into IAF.

Amid much fanfare and back-slapping, defence minister A K Antony handed over the Tejas initial operational clearance (IOC) certificate to IAF chief Air Chief Marshal P V Naik at a ceremony here on Monday.

The IOC basically means that the largely homegrown fighter is now fully airworthy, in its initial configuration, to be flown by IAF pilots but not all weapon and other systems have been fully integrated into the platform. That will happen only by December 2012 when the single-engine, multi-role fighter gets the final operational clearance (FOC).

"Today is a historic day...A state-of-the-art indigenous combat aircraft will go a long way in enhancing national security,'' said Antony, showering praise on the entire LCA team led by Aeronautical Development Agency, Defence Research and Development Organisation and Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd.

The euphoria was somewhat justified, given that the supersonic fighter has been built from scratch in a country with an extremely poor defence-industrial base and in the face of international sanctions for several years.

But there has to be a reality check, even if it seems harsh. Even Antony admitted that Tejas had reached just "the semi-final stage'' at this point. As was first reported by TOI earlier, the overall developmental cost of the Tejas project, including the naval variant and trainer, has zoomed up to Rs 17,269 crore from the initial Rs 560 crore earmarked for it in 1983. With each Tejas to cost around Rs 200 crore over and above this, India will end up spending well over Rs 25,000 crore on the programme.

Moreover, the real induction of the first 40 Tejas jets will begin only towards end-2013, with the first two squadrons becoming fully operational at the Sulur airbase (Tamil Nadu) by 2015 or so, a full three decades after the LCA project was first sanctioned to replace the ageing MiG-21s.

That's not all. The first test-flight of the Tejas Mark-II version, with more powerful American GE F-414 engines, will be possible only by December 2014, with its production beginning in June 2016. And even then, the Tejas will just be a medium to low-end fighter, not a high-end air dominance one.

ACM Naik, in fact, described Tejas as a "MiG-21 plus-plus'', and made it clear that it was not even a fourth-generation fighter at present but would be in the future, indicating it will primarily be used to plug the gap in numbers.

Consequently, India's frontline combat fighters will the 270 Russian-origin Sukhoi-30MKIs already being inducted for around $12 billion, the 126 new medium multi-role combat aircraft to be acquired in the $10.4 billion MMRCA project and the 250 to 300 fifth-generation fighter aircraft to be built with Russia in the gigantic $35 billion project.

Yes, there is no getting away from the critical fact that India has to be self-reliant in military hardware and software if it wants to emerge as a superpower on the global stage. But the Tejas saga puts serious question marks on the defence indigenisation model being followed.

The fighter, for instance, is still only around 60% indigenous despite being 27 years in the making. It, for example, is powered by American GE engines, with the indigenous Kaveri engine failing to pass muster despite Rs 2,839 crore being spent on it since 1989.

Riaz Haq said...

India tops arms imports in the world, according to Bloomberg News:

India replaced China as the world’s top weapons importer, according to a study by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, as it aims to modernize its armed forces and project power through the region.

India received 9 percent of the volume of international arms transfers from 2006 to 2010, with 82 percent of that coming from Russia, Sipri said in a report released today. That topped China, South Korea and Pakistan, it said.

“The increases are substantial, and if you look at the Indian plans for the near future, they are massive,” Siemon Wezeman, a Sipri researcher who helped write the report, said in a telephone interview. “It’s worrying from the fact you are bringing a lot of weapons into an area that isn’t particularly stable, where you’ve got countries that have been at each other’s throats.”

India’s internal security threats and rivalries with Pakistan and China, the nuclear-armed neighbors with which it has border disputes, have driven the increase in expenditures, Wezeman said. The country’s plans to boost defense spending in the next decade to modernize the military have attracted U.S. and European firms banned from selling weapons to China.

The average volume of worldwide arms transfers in 2006-2010 was 24 percent higher than in 2001-2005, the report said. The Asia-Pacific region led the world, accounting for 43 percent of arms imports. It was followed by Europe at 21 percent, the Middle East at 17 percent and the Americas at 12 percent.
Economic Growth

India’s $1.3 trillion economy may expand by as much as 9.25 percent in the next financial year, the fastest pace since 2008, according to a Finance Ministry survey released last month. The World Bank estimates that more than three-quarters of India’s 1.2 billion people live on less than $2 a day.

Purchases by India of submarines, aircraft carriers and transport airplanes “can only be seen in the framework of regional ambitions,” Wezeman said.

India is seeking to buy 126 warplanes in the world’s biggest fighter-jet purchase in 15 years, according to the Indian Defense Ministry. Paris-based Dassault Aviation SA (AM), Chicago-based Boeing Co. (BA), Bethesda, Maryland-based Lockheed Martin Corp. (LMT), Sweden’s Saab AB (SAABB), Russia’s United Aircraft Corp. and European Aeronautic, Defense & Space Co., based in Paris and Munich, are competing for the contract.

The outlays on weapons have allowed India to demand technology transfers as part of purchases, Sipri said. The U.S. and Europe have banned weapons sales to China since the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown. U.S. military officials have questioned China’s motives in developing ballistic anti-ship missiles and radar-evading fighter jets.
‘Huge Market’

India is “in a position where they have this huge market at a time when exporters are in desperate need to find export markets,” Wezeman said.

The U.S. remains the world’s largest exporter of military equipment, accounting for 30 percent of arms deliveries between 2006 and 2010, the report said. The Defense Department is requesting $671 billion for the 2012 fiscal year starting Oct. 1, $37 billion less than this year’s request.

Stockholm-based Sipri, founded in 1966, conducts research into conflict, armaments, arms control and disarmament, according to its website. A substantial part of its funding comes from the Swedish government, it said.

Pavan said...

Indian strategic thinkers seem to have a blinkered view of the overall state of the economy as also human development indicators which put India at 132 out of 170 odd countries. India is a poor and indebted nation with a mounting internal and external debt. The largest single item of the federal budget is interest payment which has risen to an all time high of Rs 2,67,986 crores which is well over 3% of the expanded GDP. The next largest item is defence expenditure which is Rs 2,02,571 crores and not 1,65,000 crores as mentioned in the article as the allocation made for Defence (Civil Estimates) amounting to Rs 38,156 crores has been excluded by the writer. Civil Estimates pertain to military pensions, Jammu and Kasmir Light Infantry, Coast Guard and the cost of the Ministry of Defence. This amounts to 2.3% of the GDP which has been calculated using varied deflators for 2011-12. It would be pertinent to note that India spends a mere 1% of GDP on health which is one of the lowest public spends in the world. It is on account of the inability of the government to raise this expenditure that millions of people continue to reamain in poverty. Human security must also form a part of national security. It is a question of either increasing the fiscal deficit or reducing social sector spending . There is in fact a need to review the efficacy of defence spending. The Indian defence budget exceeds the entire budget of Pakistan with an army half the strength of the Indian army.

Riaz Haq said...

India's Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is travelling to China, as the two countries look to boost economic ties, according to the BBC:

In December, the two countries agreed to increase bilateral trade to $100bn (£66bn) by 2015, up from $60bn in 2010.

Mr Singh will also attend a summit in China that will include Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa.

China is India's largest trading partner. However, the two countries still share a very unbalanced trade relationship.

"India's import dependence on China has gone up significantly on critical items," said Samiran Chakraborty, regional head of research for India at Standard Chartered Bank.

"Whereas if you look at exports, India's primary export to China is only iron ore."

Mr Chakraborty says this issue could come up during the visit.

"One of the demands is to open up the Chinese markets to India. Otherwise the trade balance is very much in favour of China and working against India," he adds.
'Complimentary relationship'

When China's Prime Minister Wen Jiabao visited India in December, the two sides agreed to take measures to promote Indian exports in China, in an effort to reduce India's trade deficit.

About 400 business leaders came with Mr Wen to India and business deals worth $16bn were signed.

The two countries also agreed to expand co-operation in infrastructure, environment, information technology, telecommunications, and investment and finance.

Mr Chakraborty says it is in each sides interest to continue to deepen ties.

"If these two have to stay side by side sharing borders and trying to grow at high growth rates it has to be a complimentary relationship rather then a tense relationship," Mr Chakraborty said.

"Otherwise it will impact the investment climate in both countries".

Riaz Haq said...

Pakistan's July 2010-March 2011 current account surplus at $99 mln, according to Reuters:

Pakistan's current account surplus for July-March period was a provisional $99 million, compared with a deficit of $3.106 billion in the same period last year, the central bank said on Monday.

In March, the current account was a provisional surplus of $347 million, compared with a deficit of $2 million in February.

The current account deficit for the fiscal year 2009/10 was $3.946 billion, compared with $9.261 billion in fiscal year 2008/09.

Riaz Haq said...

India depends heavily on foreign inflows to survive, given its huge and perennial trade, budget and current account deficits.

India is the biggest borrower from multi-lateral lending institutions.

According to the statistics of World Bank, India has become the largest borrower from the International Development Association (IDA), a component of World Bank Group which helps the poorest countries of the world.

Among the bank’s FY10 Top Ten IDA borrowing countries, India tops the table with $ 2,578 million, followed by Vietnam ($ 1,429 million), Tanzania ($ 943 million), Ethiopia and Nigeria with $ 890 million each, Bangladesh ($ 828 million), Kenya ($ 614 million), Uganda ($ 480 million), Democratic Republic of Congo ($ 460 million) and Ghana (433 million).

IDA, termed as ‘Soft Loan Window’ of the World Bank, was established in 1960 with the aim to reduce poverty by lending money (known as credits) on concessional terms. IDA credits have no interest charge and the repayment period ranges between 35 to 40 years. IDA is the largest sources of assistance for the world’s 79 poorest countries, 39 of which come from Africa. Not only with IDA, India is also the third largest borrower of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD), a part of World Bank group with a total loan of $ 21.9 billion which have financed 77 projects in the country.

Among various states in India, Tamil Nadu hold the maximum assistance of $ 2.1 billion from the World Bank to support its six on-going projects.

http://www.gscurrentaffairs.com/india-becomes-largest-borrower-of-ida/

Riaz Haq said...

Here are some excerpts from an Indian Financial Express story headlined "More FII money to Pak than to India":

Mumbai: Whether Dalal Street likes it or not, India is now the worst-performing market in the world as dark clouds have started cluttering the economic, investment and political horizons. Worried foreign institutional investors (FIIs), who came to India in droves last year, have been pulling out funds with such alacrity this year that even a much smaller — and significantly more volatile and unstable — market like Pakistan has got more foreign inflows in the last six months.
----
As per figures of the Securities and Exchange Board of India, FIIs have already pulled out $497 million (including GDRs, primary market, stock markets etc) from India from January to June 22 this year. This has come as a big blow to the market which witnessed an inflow of $29.36 billion in the whole of calendar 2010. FIIs took out Rs 14,387 crore (around $3.2 billion) from the secondary market in 2011, bringing the Sensex down from 21,108 on November 5, 2010 to 17,727.49 on June 23, 2011.

Across the border, Pakistan received a portfolio investment of around $230 million in the last six months. That, too, when the Karachi Stock Exchange, its largest, has a market cap of only $35 billion whereas the Bombay Stock Exchange has a market cap of $1,500 billion.
----------
The latest worry of FIIs is the possibility of tightening in rules governing the tax treaty with Mauritius. If both the governments tighten the regulations governing the treaty, the fund flow through this route will come down drastically. “Funds using this route will go elsewhere. India has got minuscule funds FIIs this year,” said a fund manager with a foreign investment firm.

A large chunk of FII investment in the stock market comes through Mauritius as companies registered there are exempted from tax in India under the treaty. The government had recently indicated about reviewing this tax treaty to tighten registration norms and making the fund flows more transparent.


http://www.financialexpress.com/news/more-fii-money-to-pak-than-to-india/807995/0

Riaz Haq said...

India runs huge trade and budget deficits and therefore heavily dependent on foreign inflows of loans, FDI and FII to drive its economic growth and to meet its debt obligations....not very different from Greece and other nations depending on foreign inflows. And we all know how quickly Greek economy went from being healthy to being very sick....and how many Western economies in the twin-deficit club are also suffering now.
------------
Since 2007–08, the fiscal deficit has increased to around 6.5 to 7 per cent of India’s GDP, subsequently leading to a combined federal and state deficit of over 10 per cent of GDP in 2009–10. The actual numbers are higher, by at least 1 per cent, as some items were kept off the balance sheet.

http://www.eastasiaforum.org/2011/02/24/indias-twin-deficits-jeopardise-national-growth/

Riaz Haq said...

Brazil, India current account deficits leads to ‘inevitable’ crisis warns a Chinese economist:

Li Daokui told a forum that emerging economies such as Brazil and India face fiscal and current account deficits and a crisis was “inevitable,” Caijing Magazine reported on its website www.caijing.com.cn. “China will play a very important role during the financial consolidation”.

But there will be no such crisis in China because it is quite different from most other developing and developed countries,” he said. In February, the Indian government raised “serious concern” about a trade deficit that could more than double to 278.5 billion USD in three years and may cause an unquestionable current account deficit.

Brazil's current account deficit ballooned to a record for the month of March as foreign companies in Brazil sent more profits home and Brazilians spent more on travel and goods overseas. In January, the International Monetary Fund warned fiscal balances in Brazil, China and India were weaker than it had earlier projected.

Li Daokui also expects the US dollar, Euro and Yen to face downward pressure over the medium and long term.

The IMF had projected Brazil's debt-to-GDP ratio at 66.8% and India's at 71.8% while for China it had projected a debt-to-GDP ratio of 19.1%, warning of deterioration in the fiscal accounts of India and Brazil.

The Brazilian government had since announced budget cuts, but the country still need to do more to earn an upgrade on its sovereign debt rating, according to analysts.
For India, however, it could easily bridge the deficit if its government manages to bring at least part of the black money stashed away by Indian citizens in overseas tax havens.


http://en.mercopress.com/2011/05/16/brazil-india-current-account-deficits-leads-to-inevitable-crisis-warns-china

Riaz Haq said...

Here's an FT report on India's widening trade deficit:

India’s trade deficit widened to a 17 year high of $19.6bn in October, according to Rahul Khullar, the country’s commerce secretary.

The record number highlights the underlying problems in India’s economy and represents a dilemma for the Indian central bank, already struggling with inflation, that might force it into another rate hike in the future.

According to Khullar, and reported by Bloomberg, India’s deficit was caused by slowing export growth, driven to a two-year low by shrivelling demand in Europe and the impact of higher oil prices on the cost of imports.

The balance of trade for the first seven months of the year that started April 1 was $93.7bn and “that is clearly something to be worried about, because at this rate you’re clearly going to breach the $150 billion mark for the fiscal year”, said Khullar.

Khullar told reporters in Delhi that although merchandise exports rose 10.8 per cent to $19.9bn in October, compared to a year earlier, imports gained 21.7 per cent to $39.5bn, leaving a gap of $19.6 billion, the highest recorded since at least 1994.

But as Andrew Kenningham of Capital Economics told beyondbrics: “India’s trade numbers are not usually a source of real interest as they are normally quite good. The current account deficit was only 2.5 per cent a year ago but the number for October is quite nasty and reverses the previous positive trend. However, it isn’t a complete picture of the current account as it does not include services figures or remittances – the current account deficit is always lower than the trade deficit.”

And Kenningham thinks October’s import figures may be a one-off anyway. India’s trade deficit is particularly vulnerable to fluctuations in world oil prices as it imports almost three-quarters of its oil requirements and Kenningham argues that “it is probable that this month’s import figure will be an outlier – the oil price has not moved dramatically and slowing internal demand should push down overall imports.”

Kenningham sees these figures as more of a problem for the Indian central bank “which considers a 3 per cent current account deficit to be the maximum sustainable level. A weaker rupee will but further upward pressure on inflation. Investors may have been expecting a downward rate move next rate year but this raises a few question marks over that.”

And the rupee has continued to weaken as the eurozone crisis drives demand away from EM currencies and weakens demand for India’s exports.

India’s currency has now depreciated more than 11 per cent against the dollar this year but Kenningham told beyondbrics India’s exports shouldn’t count on any major boost from the weakening rupee: “The rupee is only about 10 per cent below its average level for the last five years so I wouldn’t think India’s exports would get too much of a boost from there.”

Thus, although Kenningham is not particularly concerned about India’s balance of payments as “it has $310bn of foreign reserves, low external debt and low levels of portfolio investment in the fixed income market,” he does see it as “a sign of stress in the economy and a further complication for the central bank.”


http://blogs.ft.com/beyond-brics/2011/11/08/indias-widening-trade-deficit/#axzz1eSmmeDzP

Riaz Haq said...

Here's a Bloomberg report on Indian equities' performance:

Nov. 29 (Bloomberg) -- India’s benchmark stock index, the third-worst performer in Asia this year, may be hurt the most among emerging-markets equities from global risk aversion because of a slowing economy and a weak rupee, according to Tata Asset Management Ltd.

“India’s in a difficult spot,” Venugopal Manghat, the Mumbai-based co-head of equities at the money manager, said in an interview yesterday. “Our macros are probably the worst or are worsening at a more worrying pace than any other economy in the emerging-markets space.” His Tata Balanced Fund has beaten 91 percent of its peers in the past three years, data compiled by Bloomberg show.
------------
In India, overseas investors pulled out $842 million from equities last week, the biggest weekly outflow in six months, data from the regulator show. That sent the rupee to a record low of 52.73 on Nov. 22. The currency gained 0.6 percent to 51.965 yesterday, paring this year’s drop to 14 percent, the worst performance among Asian currencies.

“We could have further pressure from the global end, which means risk aversion could go up and currencies could depreciate further,” Manghat, 40, said.

The Reserve Bank of India, which has lifted interest rates 13 times since March 2010 to curb inflation that has exceeded 9 percent since December, last month cut its growth forecast to 7.6 percent from 8 percent. Morgan Stanley reduced its growth estimate for India to 7 percent for the year ending March 31 from 7.2 percent, according to an e-mailed report yesterday.\---------------
Shares of Indian consumer-goods producers, automakers and private lenders may fare better than the overall market in the next six months, said Manghat. The Tata Balanced Fund had 13.2 percent of its assets in consumer non-durable companies, 10.6 percent in banks and 6.8 percent in automakers at the end of October, the fund’s fact sheet shows.

“Consumption is a secular story and will be a big driver for the Indian economy,” he said. “India is significantly under-banked, significantly low in terms of penetration and private banks are more nimble, faster at decision-making, and are better structured to make good use of this opportunity.”

The fund has returned 26 percent annually for the past three years, data compiled by Bloomberg show.


http://www.businessweek.com/news/2011-11-29/india-stocks-may-be-hit-most-in-emerging-markets-tata-fund-says.html

Riaz Haq said...

Goldman Sachs' Jim O'Neill, who coined BRIC, says India's performance most disappointing, according to Economic Times:

LONDON: Growth in all four BRIC economies has surpassed expectations in the decade since the term came into existence but India's record on productivity, FDI and reform has been the most disappointing, the chairman of Goldman Sachs Asset Management Jim O'Neill said on Tuesday.

O'Neill, who coined the term, BRIC, in December 2001 to jointly describe the four biggest developing economies, Brazil, Russia, India and China, was speaking at the London leg of the Reuters 2012 Investment Outlook Summit.

"All four countries have become bigger (economies) than I said they were going to be, even Russia. However there are important structural issues about all four and as we go into the 10-year anniversary, in some ways India is the most disappointing," said O'Neill who oversees almost a trillion dollars in assets at Goldman.

Just this week, India's government caved in to opposition pressure and put on hold a landmark reform of the retail sector that was seen opening the doors to billions of dollars in foreign direct investment in the supermarket sector.

The long-awaited measure, passed earlier this month, had been hailed as ending the government's economic reform paralysis that is widely seen as the root cause of high inflation, shrinking capital inflows and a wider current account deficit.

"India has the risk of ... if they're not careful, a balance of payments crisis. They shouldn't raise people's hopes of FDI and then in a week say, 'we're only joking'," O'Neill said. "India's inability to raise its share of global FDI is very disappointing," he said.

United Nations data shows that India received less than $20 billion in FDI in the first six months of 2011, compared to more than $60 billion in China while Brazil and Russia took in $23 billion and $33 billion respectively.

The glacial reform pace has hit India's hopes for double-digit economic growth, O'Neill said, adding: "India is as bad as Russia is on governance and corruption and, in terms of use of technology, Russia is in fact much higher than India."

On the other BRICs, O'Neill said Brazil's main problem was an overvalued currency which puts the country in danger of "Dutch disease" - a term first used to describe how North Sea oil discoveries in the 1960s triggered a surge in Dutch energy exports but also in the Dutch currency, pummelling much of the country's manufacturing. China's challenge was to effectively manage a transition to a higher-consumption economy with slower growth, he said.

O'Neill remains positive on Russia but said much depends on what Prime Minister Vladimir Putin can deliver in terms of reform following an election at the weekend that left his ruling party with a much reduced parliamentary majority.


http://m.economictimes.com/news/economy/foreign-trade/india-most-disappointing-among-bric-nations-goldmans-oneill/articleshow/11008228.cms

Riaz Haq said...

India faces serious financial crisis, reports Economic Times:

--------------
Unlike most of its Asian peers, India has recently been running large current account and fiscal deficits. That means it must attract sufficient foreign money -- namely U.S. dollars -- to close the gap, and a weaker home currency makes that costlier.

This is a perennial problem for India. The current situation is so worrisome because India is grappling with big internal and external economic threats simultaneously. Growth is slowing. Inflation remains high. Political paralysis has stymied domestic reforms.

The RBI, the last line of defence against a currency meltdown, has cautiously begun to support the rupee, but its firepower may be more limited than its $300 billion in reserves would suggest.

Beyond India's borders, Europe is the biggest worry. As its banks deleverage, investment money has flooded out of India's markets. If Europe's debt troubles deteriorate, India could be hit with a balance of payments crisis as severe as the one that forced a sharp devaluation in 1991.

The rupee, which has dropped 16 percent in the past four months, got a reprieve last week after the world's big six central banks banded together to try to ease dollar funding strains, helping it to snap a four-week losing trend.

But analysts widely expect the rupee, trading on Monday at 51.26 per dollar, to resume its slide.

"The Indian currency will be the first casualty of a deterioration in the euro zone crisis," said Rupa Rege Nitsure, chief economist at Bank of Baroda in Mumbai.

If Europe's crisis deepens, India's trade deficit would widen even more rapidly, and it would have even more trouble attracting foreign capital.

"Risk appetite will obviously collapse and gradually the currency crisis is likely to take the shape of a balance of payments crisis," Nitsure said.

Worries about India have spiked in tandem with concern over Europe. UBS hosted a client conference call about India on November 29, which it announced with an email headlined "India explodes." Deutsche Bank sent out a report on November 24 entitled, "India's time of reckoning."

"Suddenly everything seems to be coming to a head in India," UBS wrote. "Growth is disappearing, the rupee is in disarray, and inflation is stuck at near-record levels. Investor sentiment has gone from cautious to outright scared."

India's current account deficit swelled to $14.1 billion in its fiscal first quarter, nearly triple the previous quarter's tally. The full-year gap is expected to be around $54 billion.

Its fiscal deficit hit $58.7 billion in the April-to-October period. The government in February projected a deficit equal to 4.6 percent of gross domestic product for the fiscal year ending in March 2012, although the finance minister said on Friday that it would be difficult to hit that target.

India relies heavily on portfolio inflows -- foreign purchases of shares and bonds -- as a means of covering its current account gap. Those flows are fickle.

Foreign portfolio investors have sold a net $50 million worth of equities so far in 2011 , in sharp contrast to the $29 billion they invested in 2010, data from the Securities and Exchange Board of India's website showed. In November alone, foreign funds pulled $661 million out of Indian stocks.

"The Indian economy is one of the most vulnerable to liquidity shocks in the region, not helped the least by deficits in its key balances," said Radhika Rao, an economist with Forecast PTE in Singapore.--------..

Riaz Haq said...

Chinese banks bailing out Indian company, according to the Wall Street Journal:

Reliance Communications Ltd. opened a window this week. India's second-largest mobile phone carrier by number of subscribers was under pressure to refinance $1.18 billion of foreign-currency convertible bonds. In the current market, that looked like a stiff challenge, as lenders in the U.S. and Europe struggle with their deteriorating economies.

Enter a consortium of Chinese banks to bail out the Indian company with a loan paying just 5%. The deal gives the banks the sort of exposure to India's fast-growing communications space that Chinese companies couldn't get otherwise. New Delhi routinely blocks Chinese business seeking a piece of India's strategic industries such as telecommunications, technology or energy. The government typically cites quality-control issues or national security, though political posturing is perhaps a more likely cause.

Yet the Reliance loan deal puts the Chinese banks in a strong position over a prominent Indian business. It might also help China Inc. get more leverage in the Indian economy.

Still, politics shouldn't cloud the positives for India. The deal is a savior for Reliance, whose share price is nearly 87% below the conversion price set on the bonds four years ago. Moreover, the loan means China, through its state-owned banks, now has a significant stake in the success of an Indian telecommunications giant.

Beyond Reliance, a host of Indian companies are in need of capital this year to fulfill expansion plans or repay debt. But traditional funding channels are drying up, local markets are jittery and interest rates are by no means cheap. Under those circumstances, more Chinese money may find a warm welcome in India.


http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204468004577168443270938430.html?mod=topix

Riaz Haq said...

Here's Russian analyst Anatol Karlin on India's prospects and its comparison with China:

It is not a secret to longtime readers of this blog that I rate India’s prospects far more pessimistically than I do China’s. My main reason is I do not share the delusion that democracy is a panacea and that whatever advantage in this sphere India has is more than outweighed by China’s lead in any number of other areas ranging from infrastructure and fiscal sustainability to child malnutrition and corruption. However, one of the biggest and certainly most critical gaps is in educational attainment, which is the most important component of human capital – the key factor underlying all productivity increases and longterm economic growth. China’s literacy rate is 96%, whereas Indian literacy is still far from universal at just 74%.
-----------
The big problem, until recently, was that there was no internationalized student testing data for either China or India. (There was data for cities like Hong Kong and Shanghai, but it was not very useful because they are hardly representative of China). An alternative approach was to compare national IQ’s, in which China usually scored 100-105 and India scored in the low 80′s. But this method has methodological flaws because the IQ tests aren’t consistent across countries. (This, incidentally, also makes this approach a punching bag for PC enforcers who can’t bear to entertain the possibility of differing IQ’s across national and ethnic groups).
--------------
Many Indians like to see themselves as equal competitors to China, and are encouraged in their endeavour by gushing Western editorials and Tom Friedman drones who praise their few islands of programming prowess – in reality, much of which is actually pretty low-level stuff – and widespread knowledge of the English language (which makes India a good destination for call centers but not much else), while ignoring the various aspects of Indian life – the caste system, malnutrition, stupendously bad schools – that are holding them back. The low quality of Indians human capital reveals the “demographic dividend” that India is supposed to enjoy in the coming decades as the wild fantasies of what Sailer rightly calls ”Davos Man craziness at its craziest.” A large cohort of young people is worse than useless when most of them are functionally illiterate and innumerate; instead of fostering well-compensated jobs that drive productivity forwards, they will form reservoirs of poverty and potential instability.

Instead of buying into their own rhetoric of a “India shining”, Indians would be better served by focusing on the nitty gritty of bringing childhood malnutrition DOWN to Sub-Saharan African levels, achieving the life expectancy of late Maoist China, and moving up at least to the level of a Mexico or Moldova in numeracy and science skills. Because as long as India’s human capital remains at the bottom of the global league tables so will the prosperity of its citizens....


http://www.sublimeoblivion.com/2012/02/04/china-superior-to-india/

Riaz Haq said...

Here's Hindustan Times story titled "Assembled in India":

The ministry of defence should rename itself the ministry of imports. India earned the undesirable honorific of being the world's largest buyer of foreign arms in the latest 'Trends in International Arms Transfers' report. The ultimate oxymoron in New Delhi today is 'defence self-reliance'. This state of affairs will continue so long as the ministry continues to believe in the State-owned defence sector.

India's imports of defence equipment surged 38% to $12.7 billion from 2007-11, say the authors of the report, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI). The only better defence growth figures? Number of speeches by defence minister AK Antony declaring self-reliance to be his goal.

At the time the report was released, Antony spoke at the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO). He complained that DRDO had "many deficiencies", that it was "slow" in implementing recommended reforms. A few days earlier he called for change at Hindustan Aeronautics, another stalwart of India's government defence industry whose core competence is assembling imported airplane kits.

SIPRI's report underlines the true trend in India's defence industry. Namely, that the louder the mantra 'self-reliance' is chanted by defence officialdom, the further the goal moves away from India.

It's not just that the Indian defence sector can't build simple trainer airplanes or armoured vehicles. It even struggles to design usable rifles or make good boots. "Indian soldiers", says Commodore Uday Bhaskar of the National Maritime Foundation, "prefer to buy their uniforms from private tailors rather than wear free government issue".

Antony's criticisms should mean that his office at least understands the problem. But the reforms the ministry advocates are, ultimately, about preserving the defence sector's commanding heights for the State-owned firms. And it's this "tweak the status quo" mindset that ensures India's security increasingly depends on how fast it can import.

Rising Indian arms purchases and stiff offset requirements - roughly half the cost of foreign purchases must be outsourced to Indian firms - means billions of dollars' worth of contracts will float out of the windows of South Block. Antony is asking DRDO and company to get their act together so they can cash in on this bonanza.

The ministry's hope is that these State-owned firms will absorb some imported technologies, recycle them and preserve the myth of indigenous defence production for another decade. The subtext to Antonyspeak should be: you need to change so you can keep pulling the wool over India's eyes.

The defence ministry loves the term 'technology transfer'. These are weasel words. Every study shows this to be a way to temporarily get obsolete knowhow. Transfers are like cheat-sheets. They keep you from doing the hard work of really learning something. The State-owned defence firms are like students who mug enough to get past each exam and graduate with blank minds.

In 2005, DRDO spoke of making 70% of Indian defence equipment at home. But the figures haven't change in all these years, says Air Vice-Marshal Kapil Kak of the Centre for Air Power Studies. "Government stonewalling has meant there has been no energising of the defence sector." Officially, India is at 30% indigenisation. So much of this is screwdriver work, says Brigadier Gurmeet Kanwal of the Centre for Land Warfare Studies, "That the actual figure is 20% or less."

The Tatra truck, left-hand drive after 25 years, is only a more glaring example of this import-and-assemble game.--------------


http://www.hindustantimes.com/News-Feed/ColumnsOthers/Assembled-in-India/Article1-834008.aspx

Riaz Haq said...

Here's Bloomberg on worsening imbalances in India:

Indian Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee missed his budget-deficit target by the most in three years and announced a 12 percent increase in debt sales, sending bond yields to a two-month high.

The shortfall in finances in the year ending March will be 5.9 percent of gross domestic product, 1.3 percentage points more than the goal, Mukherjee said in a March 16 speech in parliament. That was the biggest margin of failure since falling short of the aim by 3.5 percentage points in the 12 months through March 2009, the height of the global financial crisis.

Goldman Sachs Asset Management Ltd. and FIM Asset Management Ltd. said the budget didn’t do enough to restore the credibility of Mukherjee, who pledged to cut the deficit to 5.1 percent of GDP in the 12 months starting April. The yield on 10- year bonds had the biggest weekly increase since January to 8.43 percent last week, compared with 3.55 percent in China, where the 2012 deficit was 1.5 percent of GDP.
----------
The finance ministry plans to sell a record 5.69 trillion rupees of debt the next fiscal year, compared with 5.1 trillion rupees in the 12 months ending March 31. Underwriters had to buy unsold bonds at nine auctions this fiscal year, central bank data show, signaling demand didn’t match supply of notes. The government will set the first-half borrowing target on March 23, Shaktikanta Das, additional secretary in the ministry, said on March 16.

Yields on 10-year (GIND10YR) sovereign debt jumped 14 basis points, 0.14 percentage point, last week after data on the website of the Controller General of Accounts showed India’s budget gap widened to 4.35 trillion rupees in the 10 months through January, exceeding the full-year target of 4.13 trillion rupees. A year earlier, the shortfall was 58.3 percent of the annual goal.
------------
The shortfall will reach 5.8 percent of GDP in the year starting April, he predicts. The finance ministry has exceeded its budgeted spending target in eight of the last 10 years, according to government data.

The yield on the 8.79 percent note due November 2021 fell one basis point today after climbing seven basis points on March 16. The extra yield investors seek to hold the notes instead of U.S. Treasuries has rebounded 11 basis points from an eight- month low of 601 reached on March 14, data compiled by Bloomberg show.
Spectrum Sale

Rupee-denominated bonds handed investors a loss of 0.3 percent in March, compared with a 0.2 percent return on yuan notes, according to indexes compiled by HSBC Holdings Plc. India’s revenue collection was 69.5 percent of the full-year target in the 10 months through January, compared with 92.2 percent a year earlier, official data showed this month. The rupee advanced 0.2 percent today to 50.0885 per dollar after declining 0.7 percent last week, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
-----------
Still, global investors have cut holdings of Indian debt by $634 million since Feb. 29, pulling money out of the local market for the first time in six months, exchange data show.

The cost of protecting the debt of State Bank of India, seen as a proxy for the sovereign, against non-payment climbed this month. Five-year credit-default swaps on the lender now cost 305 basis points, compared with 300 at the end of February, according to CMA, which is owned by CME Group Inc. and compiles prices quoted by dealers in privately negotiated markets. The swaps pay face value in exchange for the underlying debt should a company fail to adhere to its agreements.
--------


http://mobile.bloomberg.com/news/2012-03-19/biggest-budget-miss-since-2009-hurts-confidence-india-credit

Riaz Haq said...

Here's Times of India on declining capital inflows:

Southeast Asian nations are swallowing an outflow of money from India, as foreign investors lose patience with its policy paralysis and slowing growth and aim instead for more promising emerging markets such as Indonesia.

Corruption scandals and high inflation have added to India's woes, which have seen growth slow to a three-year low while the fiscal deficit widened to 5.9 per cent of GDP in the last financial year.

"India was sold on the promise of high growth which simply hasn't panned out over the past four years," said Gautam Prakash, founder of US based hedge fund Monsoon Capital.

Foreign investors pulled a net $540 million out from India in March and April, compared with $13 billion in inflows in January-February.

Foreign portfolio flows into Indian stocks have dropped 99 percent to just 5.17 billion rupees since a March budget that largely disappointed investors, compared with 427.36 billion rupees in 2012 before the budget.

Among the most significant developments from the shift has been the direction in which money is headed - with a big chunk flowing to Jakarta and other Southeast Asian capitals.

Two provisions put forward in the budget to tax indirect investments and combat tax evasion were the last straw for some global mutual funds, prompting an acceleration of money leaving India.

While the provisions were later put on ice, the prospect that such a tax could be proposed in India was enough for some investors to send their Asia-allocated money further east.

"You're seeing a situation where the 'I' in BRIC is being replaced by Indonesia," said Tim Condon, head of research and strategy for Asia at ING.

Left out

An emerging market brochure distributed by Franklin Templeton last month had data on India missing from a world map. From a global leader in emerging market investing, led by omnipresent guru Mark Mobius, that omission was telling.

India exposure in Asia's biggest equity fund, the $18 billion Templeton Asian Growth fund, dropped to 16 percent of its assets at the end of March from nearly 20 percent a year ago, while exposure to Association of Southeast Asian Nations countries rose to 35 percent from 31 percent during the period.

An ASEAN-focused equity fund launched by Daiwa Asset Management started with about $366 million in February and has since grown to manage about $430 million, while Fidelity Funds-ASEAN has seen a net inflow of nearly $250 million in the last year.

The bigger ASEAN markets do not necessarily offer a compelling case on valuation grounds.

"Generally we are more negative on India than we are positive on the alternatives, such as Indonesia and the Philippines where we feel the markets have perhaps run ahead of themselves," said David Baran, co-founder of Tokyo-based hedge fund Symphony Financial Partners.

"However, the ASEAN alternatives do have more positives and less negatives than India and we think that foreign investment outflows from India into the ASEAN alternatives are highly likely to increase if anything."

Indian shares trade at price to book value of 1.9 times, higher than 1.4 times for Asia Pacific shares as a whole but less than 3.1 times for Indonesia, 2.2 times for Thailand and 2.5 times for Philippines, according to data from Thomson Reuters StarMine.

The trend, nonetheless, is clear as money managers shift away from India, at least for the short-term, towards markets that offer the same favourable demographics and growth potential that had previously drawn investors to Delhi and Mumbai..


http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/business/international-business/As-funds-flee-Indias-pain-is-Southeast-Asias-gain/articleshow/13317960.cms

Riaz Haq said...

Here's a Defense News piece on India abandoning domestic jet engine program:

India has abandoned its efforts to build its own engine to power the Light Combat Aircraft (LCA) Mark-2, according to Indian Defence Ministry sources.

The Kaveri engine, which Indian defense scientists are trying to build, has failed to meet Indian Air Force requirements two decades after the project began, the MoD sources said.

This means the LCA Mark-2 will be powered only by U.S. company General Electric’s GE-414 engine, which was short-listed earlier over Germany’s Eurojet to power the LCA Mark-2. The aircraft, under development at Bangalore’s Aeronautical Development Agency, is expected to be ready around 2017.

While an MoD official would not say that the engine project has been abandoned for the aircraft, he did say that the Kaveri engine does not fully meet the Air Force’s thrust requirements. The MoD has now decided to use the Kaveri engine to power only UAVs, the official added.

India’s Defence Research and Development Organization (DRDO), the agency that is building the Kaveri, had been in consultation with French company Snecma for the past three years to help complete the engine.

DRDO and Snecma had been negotiating to co-develop and co-produce the engine, but they have yet to sign an agreement, the MoD official said.

While the official would not say why the negotiations failed, an Indian Air Force source said the Kaveri project to power the LCA has been all but abandoned. Beyond powering UAVs, the engine also will be a technology demonstration project.

The Air Force source added that besides the failure to meet the thrust level, the Kaveri also has technical problems with its compressor, turbine and engine control system.

Meanwhile, the LCA Mark-1 is readying for induction by 2014, nearly 15 years behind schedule. It will be powered by the GE-404 engine, also from General Electric.

For the LCA Mark-2 program, ADA will order 99 GE-414 engines and the rest will be manufactured in India under technology transfer arrangements.


http://www.defensenews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2012306170005

Hopewins said...


SOURCE: http://data.worldbank.org/

-----------------------------

Current Account Deficits:

Pakistan India
1990 -4.2% -2.2%
1991 -2.8% -1.6%
1992 -3.9% -1.5%
1993 -5.6% -0.7%
1994 -3.5% -0.5%
1995 -5.5% -1.5%
1996 -7.0% -1.5%
1997 -2.7% -0.7%
1998 -3.6% -1.6%
1999 -1.5% -0.7%
2000 -0.1% -1.0%
2001 2.6% 0.3%
2002 5.3% 1.4%
2003 4.3% 1.4%
2004 -0.8% 0.1%
2005 -3.3% -1.2%
2006 -5.3% -1.0%
2007 -5.8% -0.7%
2008 -9.6% -2.5%
2009 -2.5% -1.9%
2010 -0.8% -3.1%

-----------------------------

Government Fiscal Deficits:

Pakistan India
1990 -2.5% -3.4%
1991 -5.5% -2.3%
1992 -5.8% -2.3%
1993 -6.6% -4.0%
1994 -5.4% -2.4%
1995 -5.3% -2.2%
1996 -6.6% -2.0%
1997 -6.7% -2.8%
1998 -5.6% -3.3%
1999 -5.5% -3.3%
2000 -4.1% -3.9%
2001 -3.7% -4.4%
2002 -2.9% -4.7%
2003 -2.9% -3.5%
2004 -2.0% -3.2%
2005 -3.2% -3.2%
2006 -4.2% -2.2%
2007 -4.2% -0.5%
2008 -7.4% -4.9%
2009 -4.8% -5.2%
2010 -5.0% -3.7%

Riaz Haq said...

India on verge of financial crisis, says The Guardian:

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) in Mumbai. The country is facing its own financial crisis. Photograph: Vivek Prakash/REUTERS
India's financial woes are rapidly approaching the critical stage. The rupee has depreciated by 44% in the past two years and hit a record low against the US dollar on Monday. The stock market is plunging, bond yields are nudging 10% and capital is flooding out of the country.

In a sense, this is a classic case of deja vu, a revisiting of the Asian crisis of 1997-98 that acted as an unheeded warning sign of what was in store for the global economy a decade later. An emerging economy exhibiting strong growth attracts the attention of foreign investors. Inward investment comes in together with hot money flows that circumvent capital controls. Capital inflows push up the exchange rate, making imports cheaper and exports dearer. The trade deficit balloons, growth slows, deep-seated structural flaws become more prominent and the hot money leaves.

The trigger for the run on the rupee has been the news from Washington that the Federal Reserve is considering scaling back - "tapering" - its bond-buying stimulus programme from next month. This has consequences for all emerging market economies: firstly, there is the fear that a reduced stimulus will mean weaker growth in the US, with a knock-on impact on exports from the developing world. Secondly, high-yielding currencies such as the rupee have benefited from a search for yield on the part of global investors. If policy is going to be tightened in the US, then the dollar becomes more attractive and the rupee less so.

But while the Indonesian rupee and the South African rand are also feeling the heat, it is India – with its large trade and budget deficits – that looks like the accident most likely to happen. On past form, emerging market crises go through three stages: in stage one, policymakers do nothing in the hope that the problem goes away. In stage two, they cobble together some panic measures, normally involving half-baked capital controls and selling of dollars in an attempt to underpin their currencies. In stage three, they either come up with a workable plan themselves or call in the IMF. India is on the cusp of stage three.

http://www.theguardian.com/business/economics-blog/2013/aug/19/india-financial-crisis-rupee-stock-markets

Riaz Haq said...

Here's The Economist on India's reckoning:

.... They were there to launch an official economic history of 1981-97, a period which included the balance-of-payments crisis of 1991. The mood was tense. India, said Manmohan Singh, the prime minister, faced “very difficult circumstances”. “Does history repeat itself?” asked Duvvuri Subbarao, the outgoing head of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI). “As if we learn nothing from one crisis to another?”

The day before Indian financial markets had had their rockiest session for many years. The rupee sank and stockmarkets tumbled. Money-market rates rose. The shares of banks thought to be either full of bad debts or short of deposit funding fell sharply. The sell-off had been made worse by new capital controls introduced on August 14th in response to incipient signs of capital flight. They reduce the amount Indian residents and firms can take out of the country. Foreign investors took fright, fearful that India might freeze their funds too, much as Malaysia did during its crisis in 1998.

India’s authorities have since ruled that out. But markets keep sliding. On August 20th the RBI said it would intervene to try to calm bond yields. The rupee has dropped to over 64 to the dollar, an all-time low and 13% below its level three months ago. It is widely agreed the country is in its worst economic bind since 1991.

India is not being singled out. Since May, when the Federal Reserve first said it might slow the pace of its asset purchases, investors have begun adjusting to a world without ultra-cheap money. There has been a great withdrawal of funds from emerging markets, where most currencies have fallen by 5-15% against the dollar in the past three months. Bond yields have risen from Brazil to Thailand. Some governments have intervened. On July 11th Indonesia raised its benchmark interest rate to bolster its currency. On August 21st its president said he would soon announce further measures to ensure stability.

India, Asia’s third-biggest economy, is more vulnerable than most, however. Economic news has disappointed for two years, with growth falling to 4-5%, half the rate seen during the 2003-08 boom. It may fall further. Consumer-price inflation remains stubborn at 10%. A drive by Palaniappan Chidambaram, the finance minister, to push through a package of reforms and free big industrial projects from red tape has not worked. An election is due by May 2014, adding to uncertainty.

India’s dependence on foreign capital is also high and has risen sharply. The current-account deficit soared to almost 7% of GDP at the end of 2012, although it is expected to be 4-5% this year. External borrowing has not risen by much relative to GDP—the ratio stands at 21% today—but debt has become more short-term, and therefore riskier. Total financing needs (defined as the current-account deficit plus debt that needs rolling over) are $250 billion over the next year. India’s reserves are $279 billion, giving a coverage ratio of 1.1 times. That has fallen sharply from over three times in 2007-08 (see chart 1) and leaves India looking weaker than many of its peers (see chart 2)...
---------
India’s position could still get worse. But assuming things stabilise, when the official histories come to be written about 2013, what might they say? Most likely that the rupee’s slump caused a severe shock to the economy that made a recovery in growth rates even harder. But perhaps, also, that it prompted a more serious debate about the policies that India needs to become less vulnerable to the whims of an unforgiving world.


http://www.economist.com/news/finance-and-economics/21584010-why-india-particularly-vulnerable-turbulence-rattling-emerging

Riaz Haq said...

Here's Wall Street Journal quoting BRIC coiner Jim O'Neill as saying “If I were to change it, I would just leave the ‘C’:


SAO PAULO–Former Goldman Sachs Asset Management Chairman Jim O’Neill, who coined the BRIC acronym describing four burgeoning emerging market countries, stands by the term he invented more than a decade ago, but admits that three of the countries have disappointed him in recent years.

The acronym created in 2001 groups Brazil, Russia, India and China, and has become a reference for a perceived shift in economic power toward developing economies.

“If I were to change it, I would just leave the ‘C,’” Mr. O’Neill said in an interview. “But then, I don’t think it would be much of an acronym.”

Economic growth in other BRIC countries has been disappointing, and the economic outlook for developing economies in general has changed in the last few years amid the end of a commodities boom and a slowdown in Chinese growth–which nevertheless remains high compared with that of its counterparts.

Meanwhile, signs of a recovery in the U.S and expectations the Federal Reserve will soon reduce its bond-buying program have helped strengthen the U.S. dollar, sucking money out of emerging markets and putting even more pressure on their less developed economies.

It has become “fashionable” to say the developed world is recovering while emerging markets are all slowing down, Mr. O’Neill said. “But what people don’t understand is the size of China,” he added.

The economist said that if China’s economy grows 7.5% this year, as he expects, that would create an additional $1 trillion in wealth, in U.S. dollar terms. “For the U.S. to contribute at the same level, it would have to grow around 3.75%,” Mr. O’Neill said.

Economists currently expect the U.S. economy to expand 1.5% in 2013, down from 2% projected in May, according to a recent survey by the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia.

From 2011 to 2020, Mr. O’Neill said he has assumed average growth for the BRIC countries of 6.6% a year, less than the 8.5% average in the previous decade. Most of it up to now has come from China.

India has been the biggest disappointment among the BRIC countries, while Brazil has been the most volatile in terms of investor perceptions, the economist said.

“Between 2001 and 2004, many people told me I should never have included Brazil. Then, from 2008 to 2010, people told me I was a genius for including Brazil and now, again, people say Brazil doesn’t deserve to be there,” he said.

Brazil’s economic growth, which reached 7.5% in 2010, has been weak since then in spite of multiple government stimulus measures. The country seems doomed to growth of 2% or so in both 2013 and 2014, according to economists’ forecasts.

Brazil’s rapid growth in 2010 raised expectations, but many people forgot that the country is vulnerable to big moves in commodities prices, Mr. O’Neill said.

Another problem, he said, is that private investment remains a small share of the country’s gross domestic product. Brazil’s investment rate has been stuck at around 18% of GDP, the lowest level of any BRIC country, for a decade.

---

“They should only worry if there’s a pickup in inflation expectations; otherwise, they should relax,” he said, before the central bank late Thursday unveiled a massive intervention program to provide relief for the currency.

Brazilian inflation is currently 6.15%, close to the 6.5% ceiling of the central bank’s target range for 2013.

Even in the face of weak growth, Mr. O’Neill says he doesn’t plan to add or subtract letters from his famous acronym.

“If, by the end of 2015, there is persistent weak growth in Brazil, India or Russia, then I might,” he said, noting, however, that he expects Brazil to surprise positively in 2015, possibly even in 2014.

http://blogs.wsj.com/moneybeat/2013/08/23/china-only-bric-country-currently-worthy-of-the-title-oneill/

Riaz Haq said...

Here's a Haaretz story on an Israeli's impressions of India:

...From the perspective of a metropolis of 17 million people, Israel looks like a small, distant country with peculiar, almost trivial problems. When reasonably decent drinking water for the masses and clean air to breathe are goals beyond reach, the right of return or Hezbollah’s arsenal of rockets seem to be almost theoretical issues. It’s also a question of one’s angle of observation: For the Indians there is no Middle East, only “western Asia.”

----

Since full diplomatic relations between Israel and India were established in 1992, the two have gradually but significantly moved closer together – primarily on the basis of growing economic trade, centering around sales by Israel’s defense industry to India.
-------------
India is now the No. 1 export target of Israel’s defense industries. The two countries. Both India and Israel avoid revealing details about the scale and nature of their security trade. However, in 2012 Israel’s Defense Ministry announced that the country’s total defense exports stood at $7 billion annually. India’s share of that is probably between $1 billion and $1.5 billion. And the potential for growth exists.
--------------
A partial list of the munitions that India has purchased from Israel in the past decade includes radar for the Arrow missile-intercept system, manufactured by Israel Aircraft Industries; sea-to-sea missiles manufactured by IAI and Rafael Advanced Weapons Systems; IAI warning planes, communications systems made by Elbit and ammunition manufactured by Israel Military Industries.

However, the potential of the transactions that have been discussed more recently is of a far greater scale. The projects include the upgrading of tanks and other combat vehicles, the supply of Barak-8 advanced missiles for protection of seagoing vessels and maritime facilities, and observation systems. India has expressed an interest in the technological progress embodied in the operational success of the Iron Dome system, manufactured by Rafael, in intercepting rockets fired from the Gaza Strip, though it’s doubtful that Iron Dome is appropriate for India’s needs.
-------------

In the face of the missile arsenal – and the nuclear capability – of Pakistan, India’s hostile neighbor, India must maintain commensurate strategic deterrence. The Indian authorities might thus be interested in systems, now under development, for interception of longer-range missiles.

----

At the moment, a huge deal is in the works. India wants to purchase advanced antitank missiles. The two suitors competing for the contract, which has an estimated worth of $1 billion, are Rafael’s Spike anti-tank guided missile and the Americans’ Javelin system.
-----------
In my short visit, I found a preponderance of pessimism and gloom, tempered somewhat by expectation of change. The fate of 1.2 billion people hangs in the balance. The change might come from the general election in May, in which, according to forecasts, the BJP, the Hindi nationalist party, will defeat the ruling National Congress Party.

Even on a lightning visit, Delhi is a surprising mix for someone encountering the city for the first time. Opposite the office building housing the research institute, people are scavenging in garbage cans. The impression made by the beauty of the grand monuments is erased within minutes by a depressing encounter with the girls who knock on the windows of the car and beg at every major intersection, with infants in tow who look groggy, as though they are under the influence of anesthetics...
------
On Sunday morning, a group of wild monkeys tranquilly crosses the road in the quarter where the foreign embassies are situated. The hotels look like fortified luxurious bastions from the period of the British Empire, and every foreigner is surrounded by a waiters and other staff members..
.


http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/.premium-1.575486

Riaz Haq said...

Analysts said the new ranking (4th largest exporter) shows China's military industry has gained momentum, but that the main advantage of arms produced by China is the low price rather than core technology.

Chinese exports of major weapons increased by 212 percent during 2009-2013, compared with the previous five-year period, and China's share of global arms exports increased from 2 to 6 percent, said a report released by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) on Monday.

The three biggest exporters of arms were the US, Russia and Germany.

China supplied major weapons to 35 states in the past five years, mainly low and middle-income countries. Almost three-quarters of Chinese exports went to just three clients: Pakistan, Bangladesh and Myanmar, the report said.

China's rapidly developing military technology partly explains its expansion as an arms supplier, in direct competition with Russia, the US and European states, said the report.

"The progress in the military industry has been made due to the nation's increase in investments in the field," Shan Xiufa, a research fellow at the Academy of Military Sciences of the People's Liberation Army (PLA), told the Global Times.

However, he noted that China mostly exports regular weapons. China's military industry can only be considered at the global second-tier level, distant from the first-tier countries such as the US, due to its lack of weapons with independent intellectual property rights.

"Weapons produced by China are price competitive and the country is skillful in combining others' technology," Shan said, noting that it is a reflection of the country's relatively low innovative capability in general industry.

The US delivered more weapons than any other supplier in the past five years, to at least 90 recipients. Asia and Oceania were the biggest recipient regions for US weapons, accounting for 47 per cent of US deliveries, said the report.

"Chinese, Russian and US arms supplies to South Asia are driven by both economic and political considerations," said Siemon Wezeman, senior researcher with the SIPRI Arms Transfers Program, noting that China and the US are using arms deliveries to Asia to strengthen their influence in the region, reported Press Trust of India.

However, Liu Weidong, an expert on the US with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said that China is not comparable with world powers in increasing political influence through arms sales.

"China will consider raising its political influence in the countries that import its arms, for example, it sells weapons to allies such as Pakistan or Myanmar, but the US is more assertive in maintaining its political influence through arms exports," he said. He noted that China holds an inclusive attitude as it is not at the same level with the US on expanding political influence by selling arms due to China's less competitive technology.

Turkey, a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), has come under strong pressure from its NATO allies since it announced in September last year it would purchase China's HQ-9 long range surface-to-air missile system in preference to European, Russian and US alternatives. Ankara may yet rethink the potential $3.44 billion deal with China, Istanbul-based Hurriyet Daily News reported on March 11.

The five biggest importers were India, China, Pakistan, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, said the report. Arms imports by states in Asia and Oceania increased by 34 percent between 2004-2008 and 2009-2013.

"China's lack of independent research and development in arms demands more imports of weapons, especially those with information-based technology, to realize the modernization of the army," Shan said, noted that it partly accounts for China's increasing defense expenditure.

http://www.globaltimes.cn/content/849186.shtml

Riaz Haq said...

India's continuing abject failure to build a robust defence industrial base (DIB) has come to into focus once again, with an international thinktank holding its arms imports are now almost three times as high as those of the second and third largest arms importers, China and Pakistan.

As per the latest data on international arms transfers released by Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), the volume of Indian imports of major weapons rose by 111% between 2004-08 and 2009-13, and its share of the volume of international arms imports increased from 7% to 14%.

The major suppliers of arms to India in 2009-13 were Russia (accounting for 75% of imports) and the US (7%), which for the first time became the second largest arms supplier to India, said SIPRI. As earlier reported by TOI, the US has already bagged defence deals close to $10 billion over the last decade in the lucrative Indian defence market, with the latest being the $1.01 billion one for six additional C-130J "Super Hercules" aircraft.

The other deals on the anvil are the ones for 22 Apache attack helicopters, 15 Chinook heavy-lift helicopters, four P-8I maritime patrol aircraft and 145 M-777 ultra-light howitzers, together worth another $4 billion or so.

SIPRI, on its part, said the USA's share of Pakistani imports in the same period was 27%. China was also a major supplier in the region, accounting for 54% of Pakistani arms imports and 82% of Bangladeshi imports.

"Chinese, Russian and US arms supplies to South Asia are driven by both economic and political considerations," said Siemon Wezeman of SIPRI. In particular, China and the US appear to be using arms deliveries to Asia to strengthen their influence in the region, he added.

The five largest suppliers of major weapons during the five-year period 2009-13 were the United States (29% of global arms exports), Russia (27%), Germany (7%), China (6%) and France (5%).

Despite India's emergence as the world's largest arms importer over the last decade, the modernisation of its armed forces continues to take place in a haphazard manner due to the lack of concrete strategic planning in tune with the country's long-term geopolitical objectives, as reported by TOI earlier.

The Indian armed forces are still grappling with critical shortages in fighter jets, submarines, helicopters, howitzers, night-fighting capabilities and the like. The IAF, for instance, is down to just 34 fighter squadrons when it requires at least 44 to be "comfortable" against the twin-challenge posed by Pakistan and China.

A K Antony, who has been India's longest-serving defence minister, may have often chanted the mantra of "indigenisation" during his seven-and-a-half year tenure, especially after defence scams erupted one after the other, but failed to deliver meaningful systemic reforms on the ground.

There was, for instance, no concrete revamping of the DRDO and its 50 establishments as well as the five defence PSUs, four shipyards and 39 ordnance factories to ensure they deliver weapon systems without huge cost and time overruns.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Indias-arms-imports-almost-three-times-of-China-Pak-SIPRI-report/articleshow/32190097.cms

Riaz Haq said...

NEW DELHI: India has become heavily import dependent on China when it comes to many essential and large volume drugs making it vulnerable to sudden disruption of supplies, according to a study by Assocham.

The study released today cites the gradual erosion of domestic manufacturing capacity for certain key Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients ( APIsBSE 0.00 %) and steady migration of Indian pharma players to value-added formulations with higher margins as the primary reasons behind th ..

Read more at:
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/articleshow/37787639.cms

Riaz Haq said...

India and China have signed 12 agreements in Delhi, one of which will see China investing $20bn (£12.2bn) in India's infrastructure over five years.

At a news conference with Chinese President Xi Jinping, India's PM Narendra Modi said "peace on the border" was important for progress.

Talks came as India accused China of fresh territorial incursions in Ladakh.

China is one of India's top trading partners but they vie for regional influence and dispute their border.

Mr Modi and Mr Xi made separate statements at the end of their talks in Delhi on Thursday.

Under the investment plans, China pledged to:

Help bring India's ageing railway system railway system up-to-date with high-speed links and upgraded railway stations.
Set up industrial parks in Gujarat and Maharashtra.
Give more market access to India to products, including pharmaceuticals and farm products.
Both sides also focussed on increasing co-operation in trade, space exploration and civil nuclear energy.
------
Indian and Chinese companies have also signed preliminary deals worth more than $3bn (£1.8bn) in aircraft leasing and telecoms, among other sectors.

Despite the continuing tensions, trade between India and China has risen to almost $70bn (£43bn) a year, although India's trade deficit with China has climbed to more than $40bn from $1bn in 2001-2002.


http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-29249268

Riaz Haq said...

India's manufacturing is 13% of GDP and declining, according to the World Bank.

http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NV.IND.MANF.ZS

Riaz Haq said...

India's trade deficit with China rose to a whopping USD 37.8 billion last year even as bilateral trade picked up, totaling USD 70.59 billion, a year on year increase of 7.9 per cent.

India exports commodities like metal ores and cotton to China and imports high-value electronics, machines and energy and telecom equipment.

Chinese are now supplying equipment for about 25% of the new generating capacity India is adding to its national grid, up from almost nothing a few years ago. There are thousands of skilled Chinese expatriates at Indian plant sites, along with Chinese chefs, Chinese television and ping pong.

Riaz Haq said...

India survives on large external capital inflows in the form of investments and debts in the post-Cold War era with the West boosting India against China and Pakistan.

Indian economy would collapse without such inflows.

Read the following to get a sense of the magnitude of foreign capital inflows in India:

"Strong capital flows to India in the recent period reflect the sustained momentum in domestic
economic activity, better corporate performance, the positive investment climate, the longterm
view of India as an investment destination, and favourable liquidity conditions and
interest rates in the global market. Apart from this, the prevailing higher domestic interest
rate along with a higher and stable growth rate have created a lower risk perception, which
has attracted higher capital inflows.
The large excess of capital flows over and above those required to finance the current
account deficit (which is currently around 1.5% of GDP) resulted in reserve accretion of
$110.5 billion during 2007/08. India’s total foreign exchange reserves were $308.4 billion as
of 4 July 2008."

http://www.bis.org/publ/bppdf/bispap44m.pdf

"Gross capital flows have increased nearly 22 times from $42.7 billion in 1991-92 to over $932.3 billion in 2010-11. As a
share of GDP, this amounted to an increase from 15.5% in 1991-92 to 55.2% in 2010-11. Much
of the increase in financial integration occurred between 2003-04 and 2007-08. Given the
impressive economic performance indicated by close to 9% growth rate, higher domestic
interest rates and a strong currency, India's risk perception was quite low during 2003 to 2007.
Furthermore, this period was associated with favorable global conditions in the form of ample
liquidity and low interest rates in the global markets—the so-called period of Great Moderation."


http://www.adb.org/sites/default/files/publication/30234/management-capital-flows-india.pdf

Riaz Haq said...

Commodities collapse cuts imports but also hurts #India's exports: Petroleum, gold jewelry, Iron ore, cotton, food http://cnb.cx/1h1hDvs

Slumping global commodity prices are typically seen as a boon for India, a country that relies heavily on oil imports to service its energy needs, but a closer look indicates it's not all good news.

That's because least 35 percent of India's exports come from commodities-linked products including refined petroleum, gold jewelry, gems, iron and steel. While typically lower input costs should burnish profits for these companies, prices of the final goods Indian manufacturers crank out have also slumped.

"India's miners are seeing sharp contraction in their earnings, agriculture commodity producers are seeing their earnings affected due to the weak price of agriculture products, and the gems/jewelry sector is undergoing a major downturn," said Taimur Baig, chief economist at Deutsche Bank.

The export value of refined fuels – which make up nearly one-fifth of total exports - is down 51 percent on-year this fiscal year, for example, amid falling prices and weak demand. Similarly, gold jewelry exports are down 20 percent on year, while iron and steel exports are down 30 percent, according to the bank.

Of India's top five export destinations – the U.S., United Arab Emirates, Hong Kong, China and Saudi Arabia - exports to China have slowed the most, followed by Saudi Arabia.

While India is not nearly as export-oriented economy compared with many of its Asian neighbors, exports account for a sizable portion of its gross domestic product (GDP) - approximately 15 percent.


Thus, "benefits from lower prices and import costs are being offset by weakness in the domestic commodity sector," Baig said.
"It is clear that India's growth recovery is unlikely to be supported by a vigorous rebound in the external sector anytime soon. Therefore, it is evident that domestic demand would have to play a bigger role in supporting India's growth recovery in this cycle, mainly though a meaningful turnaround in capex and investment," he added.

Banking sector risks

Not only is the commodities slowdown weighing on India's exports, which tanked a whopping 20.7 percent on year in August, it also poses a threat to the country's banking sector.

"India's banks have sizable legacy exposure to stressed sectors such as steel, mining, and infrastructure; their recent loan growth has also been largely toward these sectors," said Baig.

"The commodity headwind is pushing up likelihood of further NPLs [non-performing loans], casting a shadow on the banking system," he said.

Read More Why it could get even worse for materials stocks

India's state-owned lenders are already struggling with deteriorating asset equality as a result of the economy's slowdown in recent years and stalling of large infrastructure projects.

Monetary policy challenge

The correction in commodity prices is also overstating disinflation in India, says Baig, posing a challenge for monetary policy.

"Pressure on the RBI [Reserve Bank of India] has risen considerably to ease policy interest rates. Non-commodity prices, however, are hardly in benign territory," Baig said.

"Education costs were up 6 percent on year through August and the same was with clothing. Thus the issue of how much room is available for the central bank to cut rates with a view to its medium term inflation objective of around 4 percent is being complicated by commodity price driven disinflation," he said.

The RBI is due to hold its next policy meeting on September 29, when it is expected to cut interest rates by 25 basis points to a four-year low of 7 percent. It has reduced its key policy rate a total of 75 basis points this year, standing pat at its last policy review in August.

Riaz Haq said...

#India's August exports shrink for ninth straight month, fall 20.7%. #Modi #BJP http://toi.in/SejmIb

NEW DELHI: Contracting for the ninth month in a row, India's exports plunged by 20.66 per cent in August to US $21.26 billion, widening the trade deficit.

READ ALSO: Devaluation of yuan will affect India's textile exports

The significant slump in country's exports is attributed to global slowdown and declining commodity prices worldwide.

In August 2014, the merchandise exports had amounted to US $26.8 billion. The last time exports registered a positive growth was in November 2014, when shipments had expanded at a rate of 7.27 per cent.

Imports too declined by 9.95 per cent to US $33.74 billion in August this year due to high gold imports, leaving the trade deficit at US $12.47 billion, according to the data released by the Commerce Ministry.

However, the trade deficit has narrowed in August as compared with July this year, when the figure stood at US $12.81 billion.

In August last year, the deficit was US $10.66 billion.

Gold imports rose by 140 per cent to US $4.95 billion in the month under review from US $2.06 billion in August last year.

The main exporting sectors which reported decline in exports include petroleum products (fall of 47.88 per cent), engineering (29 per cent), leather and leather goods (12.78 per cent), marine products (20.83 per cent) and carpet (22 per cent).

Exporters expressed concerns over the continuous decline.

The government should immediately announce steps such as extension of interest subvention scheme to control this decline, Federation of Indian Export Organisations (FIEO) President S C Ralhan said.

Also, oil imports dropped 42.59 per cent in August to US $7.35 billion. Oil imports account for about 31 per cent of the total imports. Petroleum product exports account for 18 per cent of the country's total exports.

Non-oil imports, however, grew by 7.01 per cent to US $26.38 billion.

During the first five months (April-August) of the current financial year, exports are down 16.17 per cent at US $111.09 billion. Imports too have declined 11.61 per cent to US $168.6 billion, resulting in a trade deficit of US $57.5 billion.

Riaz Haq said...

#Credit Rating: #India Doesn't Deserve To Be Equal To #China #China rated close to #US, #India near junk via @forbes

http://www.forbes.com/sites/panosmourdoukoutas/2017/02/05/india-doesnt-deserve-to-be-equal-to-china/#6e2c485d76b8

India doesn’t deserve to be next to China — when it comes to credit rating agencies that is.

That’s according to all major credit agencies, which give China a near perfect score — close to the US — and India a near junk score. Fitch, for instance, gives China A+, and India BBB- (see table).

China’s and India’s Credit Rating

India’s credit rating lag behind China is also reflected in credit markets, where the Indian government has to pay almost twice as much as China to borrow money for ten years—see table.

That’s certainly upsetting to India’s government officials, who blame credit agencies for favoring China over India. Specifically, they are critical of the agencies for failing to lift India’s credit rating despite its improving economic fundamentals, like robust economic growth rates and fiscal discipline.


At the same time, they point to the fact that the agencies have failed to lower China’s rating in spite of deteriorating fundamentals like – the slowing down of the economy and soaring debt to GDP ratio.


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China has a recent history of current account surpluses and enormous foreign currency reserves, while India has a recent history of current account deficits and moderate foreign currency reserves. This means that China lives below its means, while India lives beyond its means.

That’s a situation that may become worse with Narendra Modi’s free cash for everyone, which is expected to turn India into next the Brazil.

Persistent current account deficits make India more vulnerable than China to the next global crisis – one that, should it occur, will shift the tides of foreign capital flows from emerging countries back to developed countries—a big concern for the credit rating agencies and foreign investors that rely on them.

The bottom line: To move next to China in the credit rate scale, India must learn to live within its own means.

Riaz Haq said...

The great Indian trade-off
Sluggish exports leave India needing to curry favour with investors
Perennial domestic weakness, and America’s recent protectionist turn, make it hard for India to sell more abroad

https://www.economist.com/news/finance-and-economics/21742008-perennial-domestic-weakness-and-americas-recent-protectionist-turn-make-it-hard

In the 12 months to March 2018, $303bn of Indian goods ended up overseas. That was up on the previous year, but still short of the $310bn achieved in 2014, when the Indian economy was a quarter smaller. Imports, meanwhile, have increased to $460bn, pushing the merchandise deficit to $157bn last year, up from $109bn in 2016-17 and its highest level in five years. A surplus in services such as IT outsourcing helps reduce the overall trade deficit by around half, but even there imports are growing faster than exports.

The shortfall is swollen by the rising price of oil, lots of which India imports (and some of which is also sold on as refined products). The surge from around $30 per barrel in early 2016 to over $70 now goes a long way to explaining the rise in India’s current-account deficit, which is expected to reach 2% of GDP this fiscal year, triple last year’s reading. Gold imports, used for saving or jewellery, have their own unpredictable rhythms, but also deepen the deficit.

The current trade lull extends beyond gold and oil, however. Exporters across the economy are being squeezed by the poor implementation of a goods-and-services tax that came into force last July. Perhaps 100bn rupees ($1.5bn) of refunds due to exporters once they can prove they have shipped their wares abroad is being held up by sclerotic administration. That is working capital which small-time exporters cannot easily replace.

Worse, a $2bn suspected fraud by a diamond dealer in February has resulted in regulators banning certain types of bank guarantees that exporters use to ensure they get paid promptly, exacerbating their funding problems. These snafus come as many firms are still recovering from the ill-advised “demonetisation” of November 2016, when most banknotes were taken out of circulation overnight. The move snagged local supply chains, giving foreign rivals opportunities to fulfil orders that would have gone to hobbled Indian firms and to gain market share in India itself.

Those woes come on top of perennial frailties. Crippling red tape means most Indian firms are small: the country lacks the mega-factories hosting thousands of workers making T-shirts or mobile phones that are common elsewhere in Asia. All but a few firms lack the heft to participate in global supply chains. A relatively strong rupee in recent years has not helped.

Unwilling to enact labour and land-acquisition reforms that might foster larger firms, the Indian government is instead shielding its industry from foreign competition. In recent months it has imposed tariffs on a dizzying array of goods, from mobile phones to kites. Though those will no doubt help stymie imports, it is just as likely that trade measures imposed by other governments will hobble India’s exports.

For it is India’s misfortune that Donald Trump’s America is its biggest source of trade surpluses. Mr Trump’s administration has multiplied the salvos against India, whether decrying supposed export subsidies, making it harder for Indian IT workers to get visas or accusing India of artificially weakening its currency. Unlike many American allies, India has not been exempted from imminent steel tariffs.

India would be seriously damaged by any further escalation in trade conflicts. It needs hard currency from exports not only to finance imports and economic growth, but also to repay external debts. These have swelled to around $500bn, or roughly a fifth of GDP, more than 40% of which is due in less than a year.

Riaz Haq said...

#BoycottChina? Who hurts more? #China’s exports to #India account for just 2% of #Chinese total exports. 30% of India’s #automobile components, 80% of #Pharmaceutical active ingredients, 50% of #bicycle parts come from China. https://thewire.in/trade/china-goods-boycott-atmanirbhar-bharat via @thewire_in

Trade figures suggest that India is the biggest importer of Chinese consumer goods. India imports almost seven times more from China than it exports to it. India has huge trade deficit with China – its largest with any country. In 2018-19, India’s exports to China were mere $16.7 billion, while imports were $70.3 billion, leaving a trade deficit of $53.6 billion.

It needs to be acknowledged that China’s exports to India account for only 2% of its total exports, so even if Indians boycott all the goods imported from China, it will not make as big an impact on China. Data also suggests that China is India’s largest trading partner, but the trade is heavily skewed in favour of China. Thus initiating a trade war when Indian manufacturing ability is limited is not going to favour India.

The range of goods that we import from China is massive: consumer durables such as electronic goods, smartphones, industrial goods, vehicles, solar cells, and essential pharmaceutical products including tuberculosis and leprosy drugs and antibiotics, among many others.

In 2017-18, almost 60% of India’s import requirements of electrical and electronic equipment was met by China. In our smartphone industry, out of the five bestselling phone brands in India, four are Chinese – Xiaomi, Vivo, Realme and Oppo. These four brands combined dominate over 60% of the smartphone market in India. On the other hand, 30% of India’s automobile components are met from China and about 90% of the country’s toy market is occupied by Chinese products. Similarly, 50% of the demand in the country’s bicycle market is met by imports in which China has a large share. Thus, some of the key sectors of the Indian economy are critically dependent on China.


Talking of Chinese investments in our tech space, investments have seen a massive spike in recent times. A report published by Gateway House, a think-tank associated with the Indian Council on Global Relations, estimates $4 billion of Chinese tech investment in Indian startups. The Alibaba Group alone has strategic investments in Big Basket ($250 million), Paytm.com ($400 million), Paytm Mall ($150 million), Zomato ($200 million) and Snapdeal ($700 million).

Similarly, another Chinese group, Tencent Holdings, has investment in Indian firms like Byju’s ($50 million), Dream11 ($150 million), Flipkart ($300 million), Hike Messenger ($150 million), Ola ($500 million) and Swiggy ($500 million). Additionally, these Chinese firms are not the sole owner of these platforms. Many Indian and non-Chinese investors hold majority control in most of these companies, making it difficult to classify them as Chinese or non-Chinese. These insights negate any immediate ideas of rhetorical boycott calls without acknowledging the associated benefits India reaps from this relationship.

Trade data also goes on to demonstrate that India exports less to China (mainly raw materials) and imports more (mainly electronics and other manufactured goods which are in high demand). Statistics reveal that India’s pharma sector has critical dependence on Chinese imports used in drugs manufacturing.

India’s potential to manufacture hydroxychloroquine (HCQ), which was in a great demand recently as a possible cure for COVID-19, greatly depends on the Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients (APIs), or the raw materials used in the manufacture of these medicines or formulations. China is one of the leading producers and sellers of APIs, raising an alarm for us before we boycott Chinese products.

Riaz Haq said...

Unlike China, which has developed its end-to-end supply chain solutions over the last four decades, India’s manufacturing sector has been small relative to its agricultural sector. India has yet to develop its capability to produce electronic parts domestically. India imported $12 billion worth of China-manufactured electronic parts in a five-month span last year, making up more than a quarter of its China imports. Netherlands-based Philips said in October that, despite the call to derisk from China, it will continue to source Chinese components including nuts, bolts, plastics, electronics, monitors, and other semi-finished goods for its operations around the world.


https://www.barrons.com/articles/india-bureaucracy-will-hold-back-economic-growth-a9354f77

To develop a connected national market, the Indian government is building motorways, airports, and railroads to stimulate material and people movements between states. However, even when this new infrastructure is put in place, there will be wide gaps between states. GDP per person in Uttar Pradesh is around $4,000, compared to $10,000 in Kerala.

Besides the income gap, there is a cultural gap. Unlike China, where 92% of the population belongs to the Mandarin-speaking Han ethnic group, India has a very diverse population that speaks many languages. Cultural differences, language problems, and state-specific business regulations make expanding a business from one state to another a challenge.