Lesson from the rouble crash: Don’t put all your eggs in one basket

Eastereggs_ostereier

Vivek Kaul

The Russian rouble has been crashing over the last few days. On December 10, 2014, one dollar was worth 55 roubles. After this, the rouble started crashing against the dollar and it even touched 73 to a dollar on December 16, 2014. This happened despite the Russian central bank raising interest rates to 17%.
Interestingly, as I write this in the late evening on December 17, the rouble has recovered to 62 to a dollar, after the Russian central bank promised to sell close to $7 billion to buy roubles, in a bid to push up the value of the currency.
The Russian government is totally dependent on revenue from oil. With the price of Brent Crude Oil falling below $60 per barrel, the Russian economy is expected to contract majorly next year. This has led to foreign investors exiting Russia.
When foreign investors exit Russia they sell the roubles they have and buy dollars. This leads to an excess supply of roubles in the market and a demand for dollars. This led to the rouble crashing against the dollar. The Russian central bank is now selling dollars and buying roubles being sold and in the process has managed to stop the crash for the time being.
But that’s the simple bit. The first question that arises here is how did the Russian economy become so heavily dependent on money coming in from selling oil. Currently, nearly 50% of government’s income comes from oil. Oil also makes up for two-thirds of Russian exports.
The answer to this question is provided by Yegor Gaidar in an excellent research paper titled
The Soviet Collapse: Grain and Oil. Between 1991 and 1994, Gaidar was acting prime minister of Russia, minister of economy and the first deputy prime minister.
The story starts with Joseph Stalin who was the leader of the Soviet Union from 1922 till his death in 1952. Stalin essentially forced collectivization and expropriation of agriculture. “The result of the disastrous agriculture policy implemented between the late 1920s and the early 1950s was the sharpest fall of productivity experienced by a major country in the twentieth century,” writes Gaidar.
In the 1960s, this “state production of grain stabilized” and remained fixed at around 65 million tonnes per year, until the late 1980s. The trouble was that the urban population was increasing and more grain was needed. This led to Russia becoming a major importer of food grains.
As Gaidar points out: “The cities, however, continued to grow. What policy could succeed if a country had no increase in grain production and an 80 million–person increase in its urban population? The picture was bleak. Russia, which before World War I was the biggest grain exporter—significantly larger than the United States and Canada—started to be the biggest world importer of grain, more so than Japan and China combined.”
So, the harebrained agricultural policies of Stalin turned the world’s biggest exporter of grains into the world’s biggest importer, in a matter of a few decades. The trouble was that the imports had to be paid for in hard currency (largely dollars). Nations like Japan were also importing food grains, but then they also were exporting a lot of goods using “their machine-building and processing industries” as well. This helped Japan earn the foreign exchange it needed to pay for its imports.
The Soviet Union did not have this ability simply because it had followed a policy of “socialist industrialization” which had resulted in “in the Soviet industry being unable to sell any processed (value-added) products”.
Since no one would buy machine products manufactured in the Soviet Union, it became a big exporter of raw materials which included oil and gas. As Gaidar writes: “The Soviet economy thus hinged on its ability to produce and export raw commodities—namely, oil and gas. The Soviet leadership was extremely fortunate: at almost exactly the time when serious problems with the import of grain emerged, rich oil fields were discovered in the Tyumen region of Western Siberia.”
So, oil and gas helped the Soviet Union earn enough dollars to pay for the food grains that it needed to feed its citizens. The country was totally dependent on the revenue from oil and gas.
In fact, its leaders had to get the Tyumenneftegaz (the  production association of the oil and gas industry in the Tyumen region) to produce more than what had been initially planned for. “The Soviet premier, Aleksey Kosygin, used to call the chief of the Tyumenneftegaz, Viktor Muravlenko, and explain the desperation of the situation: “
Dai tri milliona ton sverkh plana. S khlebushkom sovsem plokho” [Please give three million tons above the planning level. The situation with the bread is awful],” writes Gaidar.
After the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991, this model has been followed by Russia as well. The trouble is that over the years Russia started to assume that high oil prices would stay forever. As Gaidar puts it: “ the idea that “high oil revenues are forever” has gained an even wider acceptance.”
Interestingly,
The Financial Times reports that around two weeks back, the current Russian president Vladmir Putin, “ signed the federal budget for 2015-17 — which is still based on forecasts of 2.5 per cent annual gross domestic product growth, 5.5 per cent inflation and oil at $96 a barrel.” As I write this Brent Crude Oil is selling at around $59.3 per barrel, inflation is about to cross 10% and the economy is expected to contract in 2015. Hence, the assumptions are going all wrong.
The Russian government’s budget becomes balanced at a price of close to $100 per barrel, which is nearly 66% higher than the current price of oil. Interestingly, Russia is not the only country which has worked out its government finances assuming a high price of oil.
As Ambrose Evans-Prtichard
recently wrote in The Daily Telegraph: “ The fiscal break-even cost is $161 for Venezuela, $160 for Yemen, $132 for Algeria, $131 for Iran, $126 for Nigeria, and $125 for Bahrain, $111 for Iraq, and $105 for Russia, and even $98 for Saudi Arabia itself, according to Citigroup.”
This applies to the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries as well.
As Javed Mian writes in an investment letter titled Stray Reflections and dated November 2014: “Once all the costs of subsidies and social programs are factored-in, most OPEC countries require oil above $100 to balance their budgets. This raises longer-run issues on the sustainability of the fiscal stance in a low-oil price environment.”
Moral of the story: Countries cannot be dependent on revenue from just one major source like oil sales. It is like the old investment wisdom which the financial planners never get tired repeating: “Don’t put all your eggs in one basket”.
What applies to long-term investing applies to countries as well. The basic lesson is the same.

Postscript: Yesterday I had written about why the government should not be bailing out SpiceJet. But what has happened is exactly the opposite. In fact, the ministry of civil aviation said in a statement: “Indian banks may be requested to give some working capital loan based on the assurances of the promoter. Banks or financial institutions to lend up to Rs 600 crore backed by a personal guarantee of the chairman, SpiceJet.”
The question is if the promoters of SpiceJet are not willing to sink in any more money into the airline why are banks being
“requested” to lend? This in a scenario where the stressed assets of public sector banks is already greater than 10% of their total advances. Beats me totally.

The article originally appeared on The Daily Reckoning, on Dec 18, 2014 

 

Foreign investors exit Russia lock, stock and barrel: Rouble crisis has lessons for India

Pmr-money-rouble-10-obvVivek Kaul

The Russian rouble has been in trouble of late. The value of the currency crashed from 55 roubles to a dollar as on December 11, 2014, to nearly 73 roubles to a dollar as on December 16, 2014. Since then the currency has recovered a little and as I write this around 67 roubles are worth a dollar.
What caused this? A major reason for this has been the fall in the price of oil by 50% in the last six months. As I write this the Brent Crude Oil quotes at slightly less than $60 to a barrel. The Brent Crude price dropped below $60 per barrel only this week.
The Russian government is majorly dependant on revenues from oil to meet its expenditure. The money that comes in from oil contributes around half of the revenues of the government and makes up for two-thirds of the exports.
As The Economist points out: “The state owns big stakes in many energy firms, as well as indirect links via the state-supported banks that fund them.” Given this excessive dependence on oil, Russia needs the price of oil to be in excess of $100 per barrel, for the government expenditure and income to be balanced.
As Javed Mian writes in the
Stray Reflections newsletter dated November 2014: “Today, Russia needs an oil price in excess of $100 a barrel to support the state and preserve its national security.” The Citigroup in a report puts the break-even cost of the Russian government budget at an oil price of $105 per barrel. The oil price, as we know, is nowhere near that level.
The rouble lost 10% against the dollar on December 15 and another 11% on December 16. Why did this happen? Foreign investors are exiting Russia lock, stock and barrel. The Russian central bank recently estimated that capital flight
could touch $130 billion this year.
The foreign investors are selling their investments in roubles and buying dollars, leading to an increase in demand for dollars vis a vis roubles. This has led to the value of the rouble crashing against the dollar.
The Russian central bank has tried to stem this flow by buying the “excess” roubles being dumped on to the foreign exchange market and selling dollars. It is estimated that on December 15, 2014, it sold around $2 billion to buy roubles.
But even this did not help prevent the worse rouble crash since 1998. This forced the Russian central bank to raise the interest rate by 650 basis points (one basis point is one hundredth of a percentage) to 17%. Despite this overnight manoeuvre, the rouble continued to crash against the dollar and fell by 11% on December 16.
The Russian central bank has spent more than $80 billion in trying to defend the rouble against the dollar this year and is now left with reserves of around $416 billion. The question is will these reserves turn out to be enough?
Russian companies and banks have an external debt of close to $700 billion. Of this around $30 billion is due this month and
another $100 billion over the course of next year, writes Ambrose Evans-Pritchard in The Telegraph.
He also quotes Lubomir Mitov, from the Institute of International Finance, as saying that any fall in reserves below $330bn could prove dangerous, given the scale of foreign debt and a confluence of pressures. “It is a perfect storm. Each $10 fall in the price of oil reduces export revenues by some 2 percent of GDP. A decline of this magnitude could shift the current account to a 3.5 deficit,” Mitov told Evans-Pritchard.
This has implications for Russia on multiple fronts. With oil revenues falling, the Russian economy will contract in 2015. Before raising the interest rates to 17%, the Russian central bank had said that the economy could contract by 4.7% because of oil prices falling to $60 per barrel.
Also, inflation which before this week’s currency crisis was at 9.1%, could go up further. As The Economist points out: “Russian shopkeepers have started to re-price their goods daily. Less than two weeks ago one dollar could be bought with 52 roubles; on December 16th between 70 and 80 were needed. Shops defending their dollar income need a price rise of 50% to offset this.”
Further, so much money leaving Russia in such quick time, the country may also have to think of implementing capital controls.
The revenue projections of the Russian government have gone totally out of whack.
The Financial Times reports that two weeks back, the Russian president Vladmir Putin, “ signed the federal budget for 2015-17 — which is still based on forecasts of 2.5 per cent annual gross domestic product growth, 5.5 per cent inflation and oil at $96 a barrel.” These assumptions will have to junked.
Putin might also might have to go slow on the aggressive military strategy that he has been following for a while now As Mian points out: “Russia is the world’s 8th-largest economy, but its military spending trails only the US and China. Putin increased the military budget 31% from 2008 to 2013, overtaking UK and Saudi Arabia, as reported by the International Institute of Strategic Studies.”
Whether this happens remains to be seen. Nevertheless, the Russian crisis has led to financial markets falling in large parts of the world. As I write this the BSE Sensex is quoting at around 26,700 points having fallen by around 1800 points over the last two weeks.
So, what are the lessons in this for India? The first and foremost is that foreign investors can exit an economy at any point of time, once they finally start feeling that the economy is in trouble. They may not exit the equity market all at once but they can exit the debt market very quickly.
This is something that India needs to keep in mind. From December 2013 up to December 15, 2014, the foreign institutional investors have invested Rs 1,63,523.08 crore (around $25.7 billion assuming$1=Rs63.6) in the Indian debt market. This is Rs 44,443 crore more than what they have invested in the stock market.
Even if a part of the money invested the debt market starts to leave the country, the rupee will crash against the dollar. This is precisely what happened between June and November 2013 when foreign institutional investors sold debt worth Rs 78,382.2 crore.
When they converted these rupees into dollars, the demand for dollars went up, leading to the rupee crashing and touching almost 70 to a dollar. It was at this point of time that Raghuram Rajan in various capacities, first as officer on special duty at the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and later as RBI governor, helped stop the crash.
This is a point that the finance minister Arun Jaitley needs to keep in mind and drop the habit of asking Rajan to cut interest rates, almost every time that he speaks in public. Rajan knows his job and its best to allow him and the RBI to do things as they deems fit. Further, Rajan and RBI are more cued into what is happening internationally than perhaps any of the politicians can ever be.
Also, one reason that foreign institutional investors have invested so much money in the Indian debt market is because the returns on government debt are on the higher side vis a vis other countries. If the RBI were to cut the repo rate (or the rate at which it lends to banks) these returns will come down and this could possibly lead to the exit of some money invested by foreign investors in India’s debt market. And that would not be good news on the rupee front.

The article originally appeared on www.FirstBiz.com on Dec 17, 2014

(Vivek Kaul is the author of the Easy Money trilogy. He tweets @kaul_vivek)

Why the govt should not be rescuing SpiceJet

SpiceJet_Boeing_737-900ER_Vyas-1SpiceJet has approached the government for financial help. The top officials of the airline met the Minister of State for Civil Aviation Mahesh Sharma, a couple of days back.
“We have given no assurance to SpiceJet. We will take a final decision keeping wider interest of passengers in mind,” Sharma told the press after the meeting. He also said that the request for financial help would be put before the petroleum and the finance ministries, as well as the prime minister’s office.
A newsreport in The Times of India suggests that the officials of SpiceJet told Sharma that the airline had an immediate cash requirement of Rs 1,400 crore and an overall requirement of Rs 2,000 crore.
The airline, like Kingfisher before it, owes money to employees, airports and oil companies. Over and above this there are statutory dues that remain unpaid. The airline has provided a guarantee that it would clear the dues worth Rs 200 crore that it
owes the Airports Authority of India (AAI),
which operates most airports in the country.
Yesterday the government allowed SpiceJet to book tickets up to March 31, 2015. Earlier, the airline wasn’t allowed to
book tickets beyond thirty days.
This will help the airline in two ways. First, it can honour the bookings that it had made earlier and will not have to cancel these bookings. Cancelling the bookings would have meant paying back the customers who had booked tickets, and this would mean outflow of cash for the airline. The airline is currently running short on cash.
Secondly, the airline can make fresh bookings and in the process raise some money. It will be interesting to see if the airline uses this opportunity to announce flash sales. This is how the company has been operating this year.
A report in The Hindustan Times quotes an unnamed expert as saying: ““In a bid to raise working capital, the airline started frequently coming up with flash sales. It was their desperation to raise working capital as they waited for an investor.” In a bid to shore up its working capital the airline has announced over 25 sales this year.
It will be interesting to see if consumers book seats on SpiceJet given that in the last few months the airline has used what aviation industry insiders term as the “Christmas tree” option. This essentially means that the airline is taking out spare parts from its aeroplanes and using them for other planes in its fleet. Long story short: it doesn’t even have the money to pay for spare parts. So, the question will consumers feel comfortable travelling in such an airline?
Further, the government also allowed the airline to operate for another 15 days without paying up the Rs 200 crore that it owes AAI and Rs 80 crore that it owes to other companies operating airports in the country. The company also owes Rs 14 crore to oil marketing companies.
The Times of India report quoted earlier goes on to suggest that the government may be working out a “’revival package’ for SpiceJet as it fears shut down of yet another big airline after Kingfisher — both poor companies of rich promoters — ‘will send a bad signal globally’.”
Another PTI report suggests that the government may request banks to give loans of up to Rs 600 crore to SpiceJet, so that it has enough money to keep operating.
If the government does anything like that it will be setting a bad precedent by building in moral hazard into the system. As economist Alan Blinder puts it in 
After the Music Stopped : “ [the]central idea behind moral hazard is that people who are well insured against some risk are less likely to take pains (and incur costs) to avoid it.”
A very good example of this in an Indian context is Air India. Its employees know that the government will not shutdown the airline and keep pumping money into it, and given that they have very little incentive in turning it around.
While this is not the only reason for the disastrous performance of Air India, it remains one of the major reasons. Its employees know that the government will not shut-down the airline because the politicians need their free airline rides at the end of the day and that is only possible with Air India around.
The airline made a loss of Rs 5,400 crore in 2013-2014. During this year the airline will see a total capital infusion of Rs 6,000 crore from the government. Such capital infusions have become a regular feature of Air India’s survival kit. The airline also has a total debt of close to Rs 40,000 crore.
One look at these numbers tells us that SpiceJet’s requirement of Rs 2,000 crore is rather small in comparison. Nevertheless, it is important to point out here that once bailouts start they can’t be scaled back, as central banks all over the world realized in the aftermath of the financial crisis.
Further, if the government chooses to rescue SpiceJet, after this every airline in trouble will expect to be rescued by the government and so might other companies as well. And this is exactly what moral hazard is all about.
Other than encouraging the insiders to take on increased risk, it gives them the impression of the world being a safer place to do business in than it actually is. This is because the firms assume that in case of a crisis, the government will come to their rescue. And this is not good for the system as a whole.
Also, as I have often pointed out in the past, the government isn’t exactly overflowing with money. The tax collections this year have been nowhere as expected. The disinvestment programme is yet to take off. And the fiscal deficit for the first seven months(April to October 2014) of the financial year has already burgeoned to 89.6% of the annual target.
Further, as I had pointed out
in a previous piece on SpiceJet, it is worth remembering that the commercial aviation business is a huge cash guzzler and has led many a capitalist to his ruin. This is not only an Indian phenomenon, it seems to be the case globally. A February 2014, article in The Economist suggests that profits margins of airlines have been less than 1% on average over the last 60 years.
In this scenario, it doesn’t make any sense for the government to rescue SpiceJet. Further if they choose to rescue SpiceJet, they will essentially be rescuing a crony capitalist, who built his main “media” business with the blessings of a political party. This will not be a good thing to project for the government.
It is important to remember here what Raghuram Rajan and Luigi Zingales write in
Saving Capitalism from the Capitalists: “Since a person may be powerful because of his past accomplishments or inheritance rather than his current abilities, the powerful have a reason to fear markets…Those in power – the incumbents – prefer to stay in power.” Even if it means begging the government for a rescue.
Rajan and Zingales further elucidate on this point: “Throughout its history, the free market system has been held back, not so much by its own economic deficiencies as Marxists would have it, but because of its reliance on political goodwill for its infrastructure. The threat primarily comes from…incumbents, those who already have an established position in the marketplace…The identity of the most dangerous incumbents depends on the country and the time period, but the part has been played at various times by the landed aristocracy, the owners and managers of large corporations, their financiers, and organised labour.”
Keeping these points in mind, if the government does decide to rescue SpiceJet, it will be helping another crony capitalist survive without having to face the consequences of his actions. This can’t be good for the government which anyway gives an impression of being close to big business.
To conclude, it is important to remember what the American economist Allan Meltzer once said: “Capitalism without failure is like religion without sin. It doesn’t work.”

The column originally appeared on www.equitymaster.com as a part of The Daily Reckoning, as on Dec 17, 2014.

Why zero inflation is bad for the economy

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Vivek Kaul

The wholesale price index (WPI) for the month of November 2014 was flat. Hence, wholesale prices in November 2014 were at the same level as November 2013.
For an economy that has been batting a very high rate of inflation, an inflation of zero percent, should come as a welcome relief. Only if things were as simple as that.
The devil, as they say, lies in the detail. The question to ask here is why is inflation at zero percent?
The price of food products which make up for around 14.34% of the index rose by just 0.63% in comparison to the last year. Onion prices are down 56.3% from last year. Vegetable prices are down 28.6%. Nevertheless, potato prices have gone up by 34.1%.
But this seems like a temporary trend and may soon reverse. The kharif (summer-autumn) season has seen a decline in production of most crops, due to a poor south-west monsoon this year. Over and above this, recent data from the ministry of agriculture points out that the total area coverage under rabi (winter) crops has fallen. It stood at 470.74 lakh hectares while last year’s sowing area was at 503.66 lakh hectares.
Several important
rabi crops have seen a fall in total sowing area. As the ministry of agriculture press release points out: “Wheat`s sowing area is at 241.91 lakh hectares as compared to last year’s 251.32 lakh hectares…The area under sowing of Gram is at 71.51 lakh hectares this year while the last year’s figure was 85.75 lakh hectares. Area coverage under Total Pulses is at 111.13 lakh hectares while the last year’s sowing area coverage was 124.78 lakh hectares.”
And this is a worrying sign, which could push food prices up in the months to come.
Another major reason for zero inflation in November is a fall in oil prices. Petrol and diesel prices have fallen by around 10% and 3% respectively in comparison to November 2013. In fact, the government increased the excise duty on diesel and petrol twice since October, else inflation as measured by the wholesale price index would have been negative for the month of November 2014.
Falling food and fuel prices are good news because they leave more money in the hands of people. Nevertheless, its in the third and the biggest component of the wholesale price index where the bad news lies.
Manufactured products make for around 65% of the wholesale price index. The inflation in this case was minus 0.3% in November 2014, in comparison to October 2014. Since the beginning of this financial year, the manufactured products inflation has been at 0.8%. And in comparison to November 2013, the number is a little over 2%.
What this tells us is that manufactured products inflation has more or less collapsed. A major reason for the same lies in the fact that people are going slow on buying goods. This becomes clear from index of industrial production(IIP) for the month of October 2014, when looked from the use based point of view. IIP is a measure of industrial activity in the country.
The consumer goods number is down 18.6% from October 2013. It is down 6.3% since the beginning of this financial year. The consumer durables number is down 35.2% from last year and 16% from the beginning of this financial year. And finally, the consumer non-durables number is down by 4.3% from last year and up only 1% from the beginning of this financial year.
What this clearly tells us is that despite falling inflation, people still haven’t come out with their shopping bags.  When consumers are going slow on purchasing goods, it makes no sense for businesses to manufacture them. Also, that explains why manufactured goods inflation has almost been flat through this financial year.
This is a worrying sign. If consumer spending is slower than usual, businesses suffer and this translates into slower economic growth. Further, businesses have no incentive to expand also in this scenario. The capital goods number in the IIP is down 2.3% from last year.
So why are consumers not spending? A possible explanation lies in the fact that inflationary expectations (or the expectations that consumers have of what future inflation is likely to be) continue to be high. The wounds of high inflation are still to go away. People need inflation to stay low for a while, before they will really start believing that low inflation is here to stay. As and when that happens, they will come out with their shopping bags all over again.
As per the previous Reserve Bank of India’s Inflation Expectations Survey of Households, the inflationary expectations over the next three months and one year are at 14.6 percent and 16 percent. In March 2014, the numbers were at 12.9 percent and 15.3 percent.
Interestingly, today the RBI put
out a press release stating that the October to December 2014 quarterly round of the inflationary expectations survey was being launched. Once the data for this survey comes in, we will come to know where the latest inflationary expectations stand.
If inflationary expectations fall, then it is likely that the consumer demand will improve and the broader economy will pick up as well. If inflationary expectations fall to very low levels, then consumers might also start postponing purchases, in the hope of getting a better deal. Whether that happens, we don’t know as yet. Until then, we will have to wait and watch.

The article originally appeared on www.FirstBiz.com on Dec 15, 2014

(Vivek Kaul is the writer of the Easy Money trilogy. He tweets @kaul_vivek)

Rajan is right, the world does not need another China

ARTS RAJANVivek Kaul

The index of industrial production (IIP) for the month of October 2014 fell by 4.2%, in comparison to October 2013. IIP is a measure of the industrial activity within the country.
The biggest fall within the IIP came from ‘Telephone Instruments (including Mobile Phones & Accessories)’ which fell by a massive 78.3%. Several analysts have linked this massive fall to the decision of Nokia to shut-down its mobile-phone manufactruing factory in Chennai.
The fall “reflects the impact of the shutdown of the Chennai-based Nokia mobile manufacturing plant,” write Chetan Ahya and Upasana Chachra of Morgan Stanley in a research note dated December 13, 2014. Nokia shut-down the factory on November 1, 2014. Hence, production must have been falling through October and that is reflected in the IIP number.
If the shut-down of one factory manufacturing mobile phones has led to such a massive fall in telecom manufacturing in the country, what does that tell us? It tells us that Nokia was just about the only company manufacturing mobile phones in India. Even the home grown Indian brands (and there are many of them), which now have a significant presence in the mobile phone market, also don’t manufacture mobile phones in the country. They simply import phones from China and put their own brand name on it.
In fact, mobile phones are a fairly complicated instrument, we don’t even produce the 
rakhis, pitchkaris and ganeshas that we buy at different times of the year to celebrate different festivals. It is cheaper for businessmen to buy things over the counter in China or manufacture them there, and simply ship it to India.
India lacks competitiveness even in making the most basic products. So, everything from the most complicated electronic products to nail-cutters that we buy, are made in China.
Keeping this in mind, where does the 
Make in India programme launched by the prime minister Narendra Modi stand. The website of the Make in India programme defines it as “a major new national program designed to transform India into a global manufacturing hub.”
There are a couple of questions that crop up here. The first is that when Indian companies are not manufacturing goods in India and sourcing them from China, why will the foreigners come to India and make it a global manufacturing hub?
The second and the more important question is can the world absorb another global manufacturing hub like China? This point was raised by Raghuram Rajan, governor of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) 
in a recent speech.
Rajan started his speech talking about slowdown of global growth. As he said: “The global economy is still weak, despite a strengthening recovery in the United States. The Euro area is veering close to recession, Japan has already experienced two quarters of negative growth after a tax hike.”
Over and above this things in China are not looking good either. Albert Edwards of 
Société Générale whose work I closely follow has been talking about things not being well in China for a while now. In his latest research note dated December 11, 2014, Edwards writes: “Chinese inflation data surprised to the downside this week with November’s producer prices falling more deeply than expected at 2.7% – a record 33 consecutive months of yoy[year on year] declines.”
Producers price index is essentially what we call the wholesale price index in India and its been falling for 33 consecutive months in China. What this means is that prices have been falling in China and China can end up exporting this deflation or fall in prices to other parts of the world.
Long story short: Global economy will not grow anywhere as fast as it was in the past or even currently is. This is a sentiment echoed by Niels C. Jensen, in 
The Absolute Return Letter for November 2014, where he writes: “I don’t think GDP growth at an aggregate level will return to levels experienced in the past anytime soon.” Jensen is another analyst whose newsletter I closely follow. The International Monetary Fund has also been downgrading its global growth forecasts.
In this scenario, how much sense does it make to build an export led growth strategy right from scratch. As Rajan put it in his speech: “Slow growing industrial countries will be much less likely to be able to absorb a substantial additional amount of imports in the foreseeable future. Other emerging markets certainly could absorb more, and a regional focus for exports will pay off. But the world as a whole is unlikely to be able to accommodate another export-led China.”
Over and above this, developed countries are also trying to get their respective manufacturing sectors up and running again. The 
Make in India strategy will have to counter that as well. “Industrial countries themselves have been improving capital-intensive flexible manufacturing, so much so that some manufacturing activity is being “re-shored”. Any emerging market wanting to export manufacturing goods will have to contend with this new phenomenon,” Rajan said.
And last but not the least, China will not sit around doing nothing if India gets aggressive on the export front. “When India pushes into manufacturing exports, it will have China, which still has some surplus agricultural labour to draw on, to contend with. Export-led growth will not be as easy as it was for the Asian economies who took that path before us,” Rajan pointed out.
Moral of the story: just because something has worked in the past, doesn’t mean it will work now. This does not mean that India should stop banking on an export led strategy totally. What it means is that an export led strategy of “subsidizing exporters with cheap inputs as well as an undervalued exchange rate” that worked beautifully for Japan, South East Asia, South Korea and China, will not work at this point of time.
In this scenario, if the government should first encourage Indian companies to make products in India for the Indian market. Doing that would be a good starting point. This would mean trying to improve the ease of doing business in India. 
In the latest Ease of Doing Business rankings, India ranks 142 among the 189 countries that were considered for the ranking.
On the critical parameters of starting a new business, dealing with construction permits and enforcing contracts, the country ranked 158th, 184th and 186
th, respectively. These rankings need to improve if Indian businesses are to be encouraged to invest in India.
There are a whole host of things that need to be done. As Rajan put it: “This means we have to work on creating the strongest sustainable unified market we can, which requires a reduction in the transactions costs of buying and selling throughout the country. Improvements in the physical transportation network I discussed earlier will help, but so will fewer, but more efficient and competitive intermediaries in the supply chain from producer to the consumer. A well designed GST bill, by reducing state border taxes, will have the important consequence of creating a truly national market for goods and services, which will be critical for our growth in years to come.”
Over and above this, labour reforms need to be carried out as well. Unless these and many other steps are carried out, what seem like innovative policy proposals, will end up sounding like hollow marketing slogans.
While the government has made all the right noises on this front, no significant economic reform has happened until now. As Arun Shourie
told The Indian Express in a recent interview quoting the legendary Urdu poet Akbar Allahabadi: “Plateon ke aane ki awaaz toh aa rahi hai, khaana nahin aa raha (The  plates’ sound can be heard but the food is not coming).”
To conclude, once Indians start making in India, the foreigners will automatically follow.

The article originally appeared on www.equitymaster.com as a part of The Daily Reckoning, on Dec 16, 2014