Month: May 2015 | Page 5

13 May, 2015

What Arun Jaitley did not tell us about black money

The finance minister Arun Jaitley said a few interesting things regarding black money in a written reply to the Rajya Sabha recently. “No black money account details have been provided by Switzerland, UK or Spain,” Jaitley said.
This isn’t surprising at all given the banking laws in place in these countries. Further, there is an impression that Switzerland is living on the black money that comes into its banks from all over the world. As Cambridge University economist Ha-Joon Chang writes in Bad Samaritans—The Guilty Secrets of Rich Nations and the Threat To Global Prosperity: “Switzerland is not a country living off black money deposited in its secretive banks…It is, in fact, literally the most industrialized country in the world.”
What this means is that if a country which is not dependent on black money to run its economy is not ready to share black money account details with us, why would countries which are dependent on black money coming into their economies share any details at all?
There are around 70 tax havens all over the world. And black money that has left Indian shores could have gone to any of these tax havens. An estimate made by the International Monetary Fund suggests that around $18 trillion of wealth lies in international tax havens other than Switzerland and beyond the reach of any tax authorities. Some of this money must have definitely originated in India. Many of these tax havens are dependent on the black money that comes into their banks. And they have absolutely no incentive in sharing these details with the Indian government.
Jaitley also told the Rajya Sabha that the previous government had asked three institutes, the National Institute of Public Finance and Policy (NIPFP), National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER) and National Institute of Financial Management (NIFM), to make an estimate of the black money within India and that which had left the shores. “Reports received from these institutes are under examination of the government,” he told the Rajya Sabha.
In fact, none of these reports are currently in the public domain. Nevertheless, The Hindu newspaper had accessed the NIPFP report in August 2014. The NIPFP puts the size of the black money economy at around 75% of the gross domestic product(GDP). This estimate is much bigger than the previous estimates. The last official study for estimating black money had been carried out by NIPFP way back in 1985 on the request of the finance ministry. The study put the size of the black money anywhere between 15-21% of the GDP, as can be seen in the following table.

Black money anywhere between 15-21% of the GDP

Source: Finance Ministry’s white paper on black money released in May 2012

The finance ministry’s white paper on black money released in May 2012 points out: “The NIPFP study concluded that total black income generation of Rs 36,784 crore out of a total GDP. at factor cost of Rs 1,73,420 crore was on the higher side, although it turns out to be less than 30 per cent of GDP as against some extravagant estimates placing it at 50 or even 100 per cent of GDP.”
If we compare the 1985 study numbers to the latest NIPFP black money number there has been a huge jump in black money generation, with the black money economy now accounting for nearly 75% of the GDP.
The question is where is this black money being generated from? The first is property transactions. A FICCI report on black money published in February 2015 points out: “The Real Estate sector in India constitutes for about 11 % of the GDP15 of Indian Economy, as these transactions involve high transaction value. In the year 2012-13, Real Estate sector has been considered as the highest parking space for black money.”
The Hindu report which accessed the NIFPF report states that: “The biggest source, though, remains real estate transactions, the unaccounted money from which is estimated to be as big as the Plan expenditure of the government.” The plan expenditure of the government for the financial year ending March 31, 2013, had stood at Rs 4,53,327 crore. Now that is a huge amount of money.
The other major sectors generating black money are private education and mining. Politicians running this country have significant interests in real estate, mining and the education businesses. In fact, many real estate companies and education businesses are fronts for politicians.
The other major black money spinner are the subsidies given by the government. The Hindu reported that: “Diversion of subsidised kerosene to the open market is estimated to have generated as much as Rs.11,910 crore.” This was half the total amount of kerosene subsidy provided in 2013-2014. It wouldn’t be surprising that black money is being generated from other subsidies offered by the government as well.
Given this, the government has clear idea of where the black money is being generated. Hence, if it wants to it can easily go after this black money, instead of trying to chase black money that has already left the shores of this country. The question is will it do so, given that politicians are at the heart of generating black money in this country.

The column appeared originally in The Daily Reckoning on May 7, 2015

13 May, 2015

While corporates continue to screw banks, the small guy is paying up

One of the themes that I have explored since I started writing for The Daily Reckoning last year, is the bad state of banks in India. And the way things are right now it doesn’t seem like the situation is going to improve on this front any time soon.
In a research note titled For banks, no respite from bad loans this year released yesterday, Crisil Research estimates that gross non performing assets or bad loans of banks will touch Rs 4,00,000 crore during the course of this year. This will mean an increase of Rs 60,000 crore. More precisely, the bad loans of banks will increase to 4.5% of the total advances of banks, from 4.3% currently.
What is worrying is that 40% of the loans restructured during 2011-2014 have become bad loans. A restructured loans is where the borrower has been allowed easier terms to repay the loan (which also entails some loss for the bank) by increasing the tenure of the loan or lowering the interest rate. If 40% of restructured loans have gone bad, it is safe to say that the banks have been essentially restructuring loans in order to postpone recognizing them as bad loans.
Crisil Research also points out that the weak assets of banks are are expected to stay high at 6 per cent of advances or Rs 5,30,000 crore. The public sector banks which are essentially in major trouble with their weak assets forming around 7% of their advances. For the private sector the number is around 2.9% of their advances.
In fact, Jayant Sinha, the minister of state for finance in a written reply told the Rajya Sabha yesterday, that around 23% of the projects to which public sector banks had given loans worth Rs 54,056.75 crore in 2014-2015, have turned into non performing assets. He told the Upper House of Parliament that 17 out of the 74 projects to which public sector banks had given loans had turned bad.
Further, some year end results of public sector banks reaffirm the bad state that they are in. Take the case of Punjab National Bank. As of March 31, 2015, its stressed assets ratio increased to 16.2%. It was at 15.4% at the end of December 2014. The stressed asset ratio is the sum of gross non performing assets(or bad loans) plus restructured loans divided by the total assets held by the Indian banking system. The borrower has either stopped to repay this loan or the loan has been restructured, where the borrower has been allowed easier terms to repay the loan by increasing the tenure of the loan or lowering the interest rate.
In Punjab National Bank’s case of every Rs 100 of loan given out by the bank, Rs 16.2 has either gone bad or has been restructured. How does the situation look on the whole? S S Mundra, deputy governor of the Reserve Bank of India gave an indication of this in a recent speech. He pointed out that the stressed assets ratio of banks in India as a whole stood at 10.9%. This meant that for every Rs 100 given out as a loan, Rs 10.9 has either gone bad or has been restructured.
As Mundra pointed out: “The level of distress is not uniform across the bank groups and is more pronounced in respect of public sector banks…The stressed assets ratio[of public sector banks] stood at 13.2%, which is nearly 230 bps[one basis point is one hundredth of a percentage] more than that for the system.” The stressed assets ratio of public sector banks as on March 31, 2014, was at 11.7%. The overall stressed assets ratio of banks was at 9.8%.
This is clear indicator that the banking sector in general and the public sector banks in particular continue to remain in a mess. In fact, the bad loans of most public sector banks which have declared results up till now, have gone up. This is primarily because the exposure of public sector banks to “vulnerable sectors is expected to remain high, just the way it was in 2014-15”. The vulnerable sectors include infrastructure, mining, aviation, steel, textile etc.
What this means is that corporates who had taken on loans from banks have been unable to repay and are now in the process of defaulting on loans or renegotiating the terms. That was the bad news. Now some good news.
A newsreport in the Daily News and Analysis points out that the defaults by small borrowers have fallen. The newsreport points out that data from the Credit Information Bureau (India), the country’s leading credit information company, shows that as on December 31, 2014, the defaults on home loans dropped to 0.5% of total advances of banks. It was at 1.06% of advances at the end of 2010.
A similar trend has been seen when it comes to personal loans as well. Defaults have fallen to 1.01% of advances from 2.65% earlier. In case of unsecured loans (like credit cards) the defaults have fallen to 1.19% of advances from 3.27% earlier.
While, the corporates have been on a defaulting spree, the individuals who take on various kinds of loans have been repaying them at a much better rate than they were in the past.
To conclude, the bigger learning here is that the small guy in this country continues to do his job well, tries to earn an honest living, repay his loans on time, and so on. The big guy, on the other hand, is out screwing the others including the banking system.

(The column originally appeared in The Daily Reckoning on May 13, 2015)

12 May, 2015

Less than 5.8% of farmers benefit from the minimum support price system

Towards the end of April, the Parliament’s Committee on agriculture made a rather bizarre commendation to the government. “The committee urged that steps should be taken to fix remunerative pricing with 50% profit margin over cost of production for all the 24 crops without any further delay as recommended by this committee,” the committee said.
What does mean? The committee has basically recommended that the government should ensure that the minimum support prices that it declares for various agricultural crops should give the farmers a profit of 50% over their cost of production. The government declares minimum support prices for 24 agriculture crops which include rice paddy, wheat, jawar, bajra, maize, ragi, pulses, oilseeds, copra, cotton, jute, sugarcane, and tobacco.
Even though it declares the minimum support price for 24 crops it primarily buys only rice and wheat from farmers through the Food Corporation of India(FCI) and other state procurement agencies.
Why do I say that the suggestion of the Parliament’s Committee on agriculture is bizarre? The answer to this question lies in the Report of the High Level Committee on Reorienting the Role and Restructuring of Food Corporation of India (better known as the Shanta Kumar Committee Report). The report makes some interesting points using data from the 70th Round of NSSO (National Sample Survey Organisation) on The Key Indicators of Situation of Agricultural Households.
As per this survey there are 90.2 million agricultural households in India. From this, during the period July to December 2012, only 18.67 million households reported selling paddy. Of this number only 13.5% sold to a procurement agency (i.e. either FCI or other state procurement agencies). This essentially means that only 2.52 million households sold paddy to the procurement agency. Of this who sold to a procurement agency only 27% of their sales were at the minimum support price.
Between January and June 2013, 5.46 million households reported selling paddy. Of this only 10% or 0.55 million households sold to a procurement agency. And of those who sold to a procurement agency only 14% of their sales were at the minimum support price.
The situation is similar when it comes to wheat. As per the survey, between January and June 2013, 13 million households reported the sale of wheat, but only 16.2% reported to have sold wheat to a procurement agency. Of those who sold to a procurement agency, only 35% of their sales happened at the minimum support price.
So what does this mean? The total number of agricultural households who were able to sell rice paddy and wheat to the procurement agencies works out to 5.21 million. As the Shanta Kumar Committee Report points out: “The number of households comes to just 5.21 million (2.55 million paddy households during July-Dec 2012; 0.55 million paddy households during Jan-June, 2013; and 2.11 million wheat households during Jan-June 2013).”
The figure of 5.21 million forms 5.8% of the total number of agricultural households of 90.2 million. In fact, this number is also on the higher side once one takes into account the fact that there are households that sell both paddy and wheat to the procurement agencies. Further, as mentioned earlier not all wheat and paddy is being sold to procurement agencies at the minimum support price.
After taking these factors into account, the number of direct beneficiaries from the minimum support price announced by the government and the procurement system set up to buy paddy and wheat, comes out to be even lower than 5.8% of the agricultural households.
As the Shanta Kumar Committee Report puts it: “The direct benefits of procurement operations in wheat and rice, with which FCI is primarily entrusted, goes to a miniscule of agricultural households in the country.”
Further, the procurement benefits large farmers in a few selected states like Punjab, Haryana, Andhra Pradesh and lately from Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh. Large farmers are the luckiest of the lot—they have a ready made customer in the form of the government for what they produce and they don’t need to pay any income tax either. What muddles the situation further is that in some states, the procurement agencies buy nearly 70-90% of the wheat and rice and literally crowd out the private sector.
This crowding out leads to food prices going up. Food inflation hurts the poor the most. Half of the expenditure of an average Indian family is on food. In case of the poor it is 60% (NSSO 2011). What Rahul and the Congress party need to understand is that everyone associated with agriculture does not own land. As per the draft national land reforms policy which was released in July 2013, nearly 31% of all households in India were supposed to be landless. The NSSO defines landlessness as a situation where the area of the land owned is less than 0.002 hectares.
Any price rise, particularly a rise in food prices which is what an increase in MSP leads to, hurts this section of the population the most. Didn’t the Parliament committee on agriculture consider this, before making the recommendation that it did? If yes, why do they want to make things difficult for a major section of the population, by recommending what they have? Or are MPs too close to large farmers that benefit the most from rising minimum support prices?
The grain bought by the government is sold through the public distribution system (PDS). This grain is sold at extremely subsidized prices. Rice is sold at Rs 3 per kg and wheat is sold at Rs 2 per kg. The trouble is that the PDS is terribly leaky. As per NSSO 2011 the PDS leakage is 46.7%. This means that of every 100 kgs of grain distributed through the PDS, 46.7 kgs hits the open market. This is not surprising given the huge gap in prices between grain sold through the PDS and that sold in the open market. In fact, in some states the leakage is as high as 70-90%.
And this led the Shanta Kumar Committee to ask: “Given such large leakages, one must question the reasons behind this, and whether it is worth keeping FCI pouring grains into a system that fails to deliver.”
To conclude, the question to ask is—what is the point in keeping such a wasteful system going? The trouble is that its become too much of a holy cow for the government to do anything about.

The column originally appeared on The Daily Reckoning on May 12, 2015

12 May, 2015

Dear Modi sarkar, what about domestic black money?

The Lok Sabha passed the Undisclosed Foreign Income and Assets (Imposition of New Tax) Bill, 2015 or the foreign black money Bill, yesterday. The ministry of finance 2012 white paper on black money defines black money as: “any income on which the taxes imposed by government or public authorities have not been paid.” The wealth that has been accumulated in this way “may consist of income generated from legitimate activities or activities which are illegitimate per se, like smuggling, illicit trade in banned substances, counterfeit currency, arms trafficking, terrorism, and corruption,” the white paper goes on to suggest.
Of course this wealth that has been accumulated through tax evasion has “neither been reported to the public authorities at the time of their generation nor disclosed at any point of time during their possession.”
Some portion of this black money over the years has managed to escape the Indian shores and has been invested abroad. An estimate made by Washington-based research and advocacy group Global Financial Integrity in a report titled Illicit Financial Flows from Developing Countries: 2003-2012, suggests that around $439.6 billion of black money left the Indian shores, between 2003 and 2012. Through the foreign black money Bill the government is attempting to get this money back.
Also, given the penal provisions of the Bill, an attempt is being made to ensure that in the days to come, citizens pay tax on their income, instead of accumulating it as black money and then transferring it abroad.
As the finance minister Arun Jaitley put it yesterday: “All those who keep money outside — time is running out for them as the world is moving to an automatic information exchange and soon, when that is available, they will be penalised for their action.”
And what are these penalties like? The Bill states that undisclosed foreign income as well as assets will be taxed at the rate of 30%, without allowing for any exemptions or deductions which are allowed under the Income-Tax Act, 1961. This will be accompanied by a penalty equal to three times the amount of tax. Hence, the tax and penalty on undisclosed overseas income as well as assets can amount to as much as 120% (30% + 90%). Further, the amount of tax to be paid on foreign assets will be computed on the basis of its current market price and not the price at which it was bought.
Nevertheless, there is a way out of this. After the Bill becomes an Act, the government will offer a short compliance window, which will allow those with undisclosed foreign assets and income to declare them, pay a tax of 30% and a penalty of 30%.
The Bill also has a provision which allows the government to charge a penalty of Rs 10 lakh for the inaccurate disclosure of foreign assets, along with a rigorous imprisonment of six months to seven years, the first time around. Second and subsequent offences are punishable with fines of Rs 25 lakh to Rs 1 crore and a rigorous imprisonment three to 10 years.
On the face of it, the Bill seems like an honest attempt to crack down on black money that has already left the country and that might leave the country in the days to come. But there are several questions that crop up here.
Why is a short compliance window being offered? It makes the taxpayers who have been honestly declaring their foreign income as well as assets till date, look a tad stupid. Just because someone is willing to pay a fine of 30% and declare his foreign assets, does that make his less guilty? Or is this another tax amnesty scheme in disguise being offered by the government?
Further, why is there a distinction being made between domestic and foreign black money? The definition of black money in the ministry of finance white paper does not make any distinction between black money in the country and black money that has left the shores. Ultimately, almost all black money originates in the country, when people earn an income and do not pay a tax on it. So why is this artificial distinction being made? Why couldn’t the government have come up with a law which covered both domestic as well as foreign black money? Its now been in office for close to one year.
The answer perhaps lies in the way political funding works in this country. An analysis carried out by the National Election Watch and Association of Democratic Reforms reveals that during the period 2004-2005 and 2011-12, the total income of the national political parties was Rs. 4,899.46 crores. The Congress party declared the highest income of Rs 2,365.02 crores. It was followed by the Bhartiya Janata Party which declared an income of Rs 1,304.22 crores.
Between 2004-05 and 2011-12, there were two Lok Sabha elections(in 2004 and 2009) and multiple state assembly elections. It doesn’t take rocket science to come to the conclusion that the amount of donations declared by the political parties were clearly not enough to fight so many elections.
Within 90 days of completion of the General Elections, political parties are required to submit their election expenditure to the Election Commission of India. The National Election Watch and Association of Democratic Reforms has analysed this expenditure for the last Lok Sabha election and it makes for a very interesting reading. This expenditure statement contains the “details of the total amount received as funds in the form of cash, cheques and demand drafts and the total amount spent under various heads.”
The total amount of funds collected by national political parties for the 2014 Lok Sabha election was at Rs 1158.59 crores. This was 35.5% higher than the funds collected for the 2009 Lok Sabha elections. The total declared expenditure of the national political parties was Rs 1308.75 crore, up by 49.4% from 2009.
Now compare this to an estimate made by the Centre for Media Studies in March 2014. It estimated that around Rs 30,000 crore would be spent during the 16th Lok Sabha elections which happened in April and May 2014. Of this amount, the government would spend around Rs 7,000-8,000 crore to conduct the elections. The remaining amount of around Rs 22,000-23,000 crore would be spent by the candidates fighting the elections.
Of course, national political parties are not the only parties fighting elections. Nevertheless, the difference between the officially declared expenditure and the ‘real’ expenditure to fight elections, is huge. Where does this money come from? The domestic black money essentially finances political parties and in the process elections in India. And given this, no government(and political party) can really go after it. Meanwhile, they will keep talking about foreign black money.

Moral of the story—You don’t kill the goose that lays golden eggs.

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

The column originally appeared on DailyO on May 12, 2015

11 May, 2015

Is Modi’s luck on oil running out?

In mid April earlier this year, the finance minister Arun Jaitley spoke at the Peterson Institute, a Washington based think tank. In his speech, Jaitley said that in late 2013, India was “teetering” and was “on the edge of a macro-economic crisis”. “Inflation was at double-digits, the current account deficit at 4 percent of GDP, growth was decelerating sharply, investor confidence was evaporating, capital was fleeing the country, the rupee was plunging; fiscal deficits were high; and India was reeking with the odour of corruption scandals and weak governance,” Jaitley went on to add.
After the Narendra Modi government came to power, most of these economic problems have been corrected, Jaitley said during the course of his speech. Jaitley further said that: “A budget…which reinivigorates growth by emphasizing public investment while maintaining fiscal discipline and protecting the vulnerable,” was passed.
What Jaitley, like a good politician, missed out on saying was that a lot of economic factors improved simply because the oil prices crashed. On May 26, 2014, when the Narendra Modi government took oath of office, the price of the Indian basket of crude oil was at $108.05 per barrel. It fell by around 60% to $43.36 per barrel by January 14, 2015.
This rapid fall in the price of oil helped set many economic factors right. India imports close to 80% of its oil requirements. As the oil price fell, oil imports came down in dollar terms bringing down the current account deficit. In technical terms, the current account deficit is the difference between total value of imports and the sum of the total value of its exports and net foreign remittances. Or to put it in simpler terms, it is the difference between outflow (through imports) and inflow (through imports and foreign remittances) of foreign exchange.
Further, oil is bought and sold in dollars. When Indian companies buy oil, they need to pay in dollars. This pushes up the demand for dollars and leads to the value of the rupee falling against the dollar. When oil prices rise, Indian companies need more dollars to buy oil. And this in turn puts a greater amount of pressure on the value of the rupee against the dollar. With oil prices falling dramatically, the total amount of dollars needed to buy oil also fell. This, to some extent, stabilized the value of the rupee against the dollar.
Falling oil prices even had an impact on the fiscal deficit. Fiscal deficit is the difference between what a government earns and what it spends. When the oil prices were rising the Congress led UPA government did not allow the oil marketing companies (Indian Oil, Bharat Petroleum and Hindustan Petroleum) which sell oil products, to sell them at a price at which it was financially viable for them to do so.
In the process they incurred under-recoveries. The government along with oil production companies like ONGC and Oil India Ltd, compensated the oil marketing companies for these under-recoveries. This led to the government expenditure going up and in the process the fiscal deficit also went up. A higher fiscal deficit leads to the government borrowing more, in the process pushing up interest rates, as the amount of money that others can borrow comes down.
Falling oil prices also had some impact on taming rampant double digit inflation.
In his Washington speech Jaitley took credit for all of the above economic factors improving because of the change in government. Nevertheless, falling oil prices had a huge role to play in the improvement on the economic front, Jaitley’s speech notwithstanding.
Oil prices have been rising in the recent past. On March 31, 2015, the last day of the financial year 2014-2015, the price of the Indian basket for crude oil was at $53.64 per barrel. On May 8, 2015 (the most recent data point available), the price of the Indian basket of crude oil was at $64.05 per barrel. Hence, the oil price has risen by close to 50% from mid January 2015 onwards.
What does not help is the fact that one dollar is now worth close to Rs 64. This means that the Indian companies buying oil will have to pay more. As long as they are able to pass this on to the end consumers of oil products like diesel and petrol, it does not really matter. But what if they are not?
In October 2014, the government had deregulated the price of diesel, allowing the oil companies to set the price of diesel depending on the prevailing international price of oil. Interestingly, the government used the fall in oil prices as an opportunity to shore up its revenues from oil by increasing the excise duty on petrol and diesel multiple times.
At close to $64 per barrel, the price of oil is still around 41% lower than where it was on May 26, 2014, when the Modi government took oath of office. Nevertheless, the price of petrol in Mumbai is at Rs 70.84 per litre, only 11.5% lower from the time when the Modi government came to power. The price of diesel is 12.8% lower.
The real test of deregulation will come if the price of oil keeps going up and the price of petrol and diesel cross the levels they were at when Narendra Modi came to power. In fact, the oil minister Dharmendra Pradhan recently said: “The subsidy-sharing formula…can be extended…if the current market situation prevails.” He was referring to the compensation paid by the oil production companies like ONGC and OIL to the oil marketing companies. The compensation has come down because of the fall in the price of oil. The oil production companies still continue to compensate the oil marketing companies for the under-recoveries suffered on selling cooking gas etc.
But what Pradhan did not say is what happens if the current market situation does not prevail and the oil prices continue to go up? Will the compensation provided by the oil production companies go up? This would mean that the government would force the oil marketing companies to sell oil products like diesel and petrol at an unviable price.
It would also mean that the government would have to share the compensation provided to the oil marketing companies for their under-recoveries, with the oil production companies. It would lead to a higher fiscal deficit. Rising oil prices will also put pressure on the current account deficit as well as the value of the rupee against the dollar. Inflation will also go up to some extent depending on how much increase in the price of oil is allowed to be passed on to the end consumer. A higher inflation will mean that the Reserve Bank of India will not cut interest rates.
To conclude, the Modi government was very lucky with the price of oil falling by 60% between May 2014 and January 2015. That luck might now have started to run out, as it completes its first year in office.

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

The column originally appeared on DailyO on May 11, 2015