Month: December 2015 | Page 4

15 December, 2015

Oil@35: The govt has captured most of the oil price fall

In the column published on December 10, I had discussed why the oil price has been falling and is now below $40 per barrel. Data from the Petroleum Planning and Analysis Cell (PPAC) shows that the price of the Indian basket of crude oil as on December 11, 2015, was at US$ 35.72 per barrel. In the last one month the price of oil has fallen by around 16%.

In the column published on December 10, I discussed the reasons behind the falling oil price and why the trend is likely to continue at least in the short run. In today’s column I will discuss how falling oil prices will impact India.

The biggest beneficiary of lower oil prices is the government. The oil marketing companies sell certain oil products like kerosene and domestic cooking gas at below the cost price. The government subsidises them for this. In the budget for this financial year, the government had assumed a total subsidy of Rs 30,000 crore. This included Rs 22,000 crore subsidy for domestic cooking gas and Rs 8,000 crore kerosene subsidy. There are no under-recoveries on petrol and diesel anymore.

Oil prices have fallen by close to 35% since the beginning of this financial year. Given this, chances are that the Rs 30,000 crore allocation towards oil subsidy should work just fine. In the past, the government used to share the total under-recoveries occurred by oil marketing companies at various points of time during the course of the year.

From what I could gather looking at government press releases, this practice seems to have been stopped since the beginning of this financial year. If the total under-recovery number on the sale of kerosene and cooking gas was available, I could have said with greater confidence that the Rs 30,000 crore put aside for oil subsidies would be enough. (The point again shows how difficult it is in India to do write stuff based on data).

Hence, with oil prices falling, the total expenditure of the government should remain under control. In the past, with rising oil prices, the government ended up under-budgeting for under-recoveries. This led to higher expenditure, a higher fiscal deficit and higher borrowing to finance the fiscal deficit. This is unlikely to happen this time around. Fiscal deficit is the difference between what a government earns and what it spends. A higher fiscal deficit pushes up interest rates as the government borrows more and this is not good for the economy.

Further, the government hasn’t passed on the benefit of falling oil prices to the end consumers. The price of petrol in Mumbai as on April 2,2015, was Rs 67.53 per litre. Currently petrol sells at an almost similar price of Rs 67.55 per litre.

During the same period the price of the Indian basket of crude oil has fallen by close to 35%. The price as on April 2, 2015, was $54.77 per barrel. By December 11, 2015, the price had fallen to $35.72 per barrel. The same is true for diesel as well. The price of diesel in Mumbai as on April 2, 2015, was Rs 55.69 per litre. Currently, it retails at Rs 53.09 per litre or around 4.7% lower.

The government has captured much of this gain by increasing the excise duty on petrol and diesel. Excise duty collections between April and November 2015 are up by a whopping 67% to Rs 1,70,693 crore. Much of this jump has come from an increase in excise duty on diesel and petrol.

In fact, a series of tweets by revenue secretary Dr Hasmukh Adhia gives more clarity on this front. Adhia said that the total indirect taxes between April and November grew by 34.3% to Rs 4,38,291 crore. Customs duty, service tax and excise duty, together make up for indirect taxes.

The increase has primarily come from “the excise increases on diesel and petrol, the increase in clean energy cess, the withdrawal of exemptions for motor vehicles, capital goods and consumer durables, and from June 2015, the increase in Service Tax rates from 12.36% to 14%.” If these increases are discounted for then the increase in indirect taxes was at 10.3%, Adhia tweeted.

Getting back to oil. Earlier this year the investment bank Goldman Sachs said that there is less than 50% chance that oil prices will drop to as low $20 per barrel. If that were to happen, it would be great if the government passed on the gain to the end consumers as well, instead of trying to capture all the gain for itself.

My guess is that the government will try and capture the gains from any further fall in the price of oil as well. This ‘easy money’ will allow the government to go easy on other fronts. This will mean that the government will continue to subsidise loss making companies like MTNL and Air India. No hard decisions will be made on this front. Further, the disinvestment of public sector companies will take a backseat, as it already has, on the pretext of the stock market not doing well.

Theoretically falling oil prices should also push down the fuel bill of companies. But as the recently released data on the performance of non-financial private corporate business sector during the second quarter of 2015-16 (July- September 2015) by the Reserve Bank of India shows, that is clearly not happening. The power and fuel costs of Indian companies (a sample of 2,711 companies) went down by just 4.2%, despite the price of oil falling much more. The reason for this lies in the fact that the government hasn’t passed on this fall in price to the end consumer.

India imports close to 80% of the oil that it consumes. Given this, any fall in price of oil is beneficial to the country. Any fall in oil prices means that we will be paying fewer dollars for the oil that we import. And this means that our oil import bill will come down. That’s the good bit.

On the flip side, India is also a big exporter of oil products (we refine oil and export oil products). In October 2014, oil products were India’s biggest export at $5.73 billion. Since then with a fall in the price of oil, oil products have become India’s third largest export at $2.46 billion in October 2015. Hence, while falling crude prices are beneficial on the import front, they hurt on the export front as well.

The column originally appeared on The Daily Reckoning on December 15, 2015

15 December, 2015

Why stable real estate prices are not good news for builders

The Financial Express reports today that investments into real estate are at a seven year high. As a news-report in the pink paper points out: “Investments into the real estate sector in 2015, at close to $8 billion or Rs 53,000 crore, are poised for a seven-year high. Much of this has come in via the private equity (PE) route and borrowings through non-convertible debentures (NCD).” This is surprising given the bad state that real estate is in. A possible explanation for this is the availability of “easy money” at low interest rates in large parts of the Western world. This money seems to be finding its way into Indian real estate.

All this money coming into the sector has allowed builders to not cut prices in order to get rid of their unsold homes and use the money thus generated to repay their outstanding banking loans. As the news-report points out: “Had the investments not materialised, developers may have been pushed to drop prices to monetise inventory at a time when demand has been waning. Instead, they’re holding on to inventory.”

This is only partly correct and applies only to those builders who have been getting investments from the private equity route as well as been borrowing through the non-convertible debentures route. And that is not a very large number in a country where there are thousands of builders.

Take the case of the upper end of the real estate market in Mumbai, where private equity money has come in. The unsold inventory of homes continues to be high. Data from real estate research firm PropEquity points out that as on September 30, 2015, 6048 luxury apartments priced above Rs 5 crore continued to remain unsold in Mumbai. Of this 3,662 are in the Rs 5 crore and Rs 10 crore range, and the remaining above that.

Further, real estate prices have corrected in large parts of the country. As Getamber Anand, president of Confederation of Real Estate Developers’ Associations of India (CREDAI), a real estate lobby, said a few days back: “Prices have come down by 15-20 per cent in last one and half years and there is no further scope for reduction.” Hence, the assertion that private equity money and borrowings through the non-convertible debentures route has allowed builders not to cut prices is only partly correct.

Further, those companies that have managed to raise money through private equity and non-convertible debentures are only kicking the can down the road. Also, this money is being raised at a very high cost.

In a recent research note titled The realty reality Crisil points out: “The cost of alternative funding has increased over the last two years as pressure on developers financial position intensified. About one-third of the non-convertible debentures issuances last fiscal yielded an internal rate of return of more than 20%, compared with no issuances of similar yields in 2012.”

You don’t need to be an expert in finance to understand that 20% is a very high rate indeed.

The same stands true for private equity firms as well. As Crisil points out: “As for private equity [firms], the higher return expectation will increase the refinancing risk for the realtors over the longer term, unless the demand picks up substantially. CRISIL estimates payout for private equity funds for the sector as a whole at Rs 85,000 crore, assuming a return of 20% over a 5 year period. Hence, alternative funding sources such as non-convertible debentures and private equity [firms] are expected to continue providing some respite in the short term only.”

What does this mean? This means that the real estate companies have essentially managed to postpone their debt problem. Companies have managed to take on new debt and pay off their existing debt to banks. But this new debt also needs to be repaid. And that can only be repaid if companies manage to generate money through sale of homes that they have built. Further, they need to build new homes as well.

This is not going to happen if real estate prices stay stable at their current levels. It will only happen once real estate prices fall from their current levels and buyers start getting interested in purchasing real estate.

Currently, the real estate prices are way too high for buyers to be interested in buying homes. Hence, stable prices are actually not in the best interest of real estate builders. But that is clearly not the way they look at the prevailing situation. As Anand of CREDAI said: “There is no further scope for reduction [in prices].”

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

This article originally appeared on Firstpost on December 14, 2015

14 December, 2015

In Defence Of The Mumbai-Ahmedabad Bullet Train

Over the last few days a lot of analysis has appeared in the digital media which has tried to project that the decision to launch a bullet train between Mumbai and Ahmedabad is a stupid one.

And this is how some of this analysis goes. India will spend Rs 98,000 crore on building thie bullet train between Mumbai and Ahemdabad. This is something it cannot afford. Now compare this to the amount of money that we spend on education, health, roads, etc., during the course of the year.

For the current financial year, 2015-2016, the allocation towards school education and literacy is at Rs 39,038.50 crore. The allocation towards higher education is Rs 15,855.26 crore. When it comes to health, the government has allocated Rs 24,549 crore to be spent during the course of the year. The allocation to the National Highways Authority of India which builds roads connecting the country is Rs 22,920.09 crore. The total allocation to the ministry of road transport and highways is at Rs 42,912.65 crore.

Further, during the course of the year, the Railways plans to spend just Rs 6,581 crore on 970 overbridges and under-bridges and other safety related measures, in order to eliminate 3438 level crossings. And if all this wasn’t enough the total allocation to the ministry of environment, forests & climate change is just Rs 1,446.60 crore.

Given the amounts that we are spending on such very important things how can we be spending Rs 98,000 crore on a bullet train. Can we really afford this?

As a recent analysis on Scroll.in points out: “The Mumbai-Ahmedabad bullet train budget is also 2.3X the entire spend of the Centre on schools. The corresponding figure for health and highways is 3.3 and 2.3, respectively.” [My numbers lead to slightly different ratios, but the broader point the Scroll article is trying to make doesn’t really change, so we will leave it at that].

If we look at the entire issue on the basis of the information that I have provided in the article up until now, spending money on a bullet train, when there isn’t enough money going around for health, education, roads and railway safety, seems out rightly stupid.

Nevertheless, all such analysis that has appeared in the media is essentially simplistic in nature. Allow me to elaborate. As the press release on the bullet train announcement points out: “India and Japan have signed an MoU [memorandum of understanding] on 12^th December, 2015 on cooperation and assistance in the Mumbai – Ahmedabad High Speed Rail Project (referred by many as Bullet Train project). Japan has offered an assistance of over Rs 79,000 crore for the project. The loan is for a period of 50 years with a moratorium of 15 years, at an interest rate of 0.1 per cent. The project is a 508 kilometer railway line costing a total of Rs. 97,636 crore, to be implemented in a period of seven years.”

The bullet train between Mumbai and Ahmedabad will cost Rs 97,636 crore and will be built over seven years. Hence, the entire Rs 98,000 crore(approximately) will not be spent in one year. Given this, the comparisons with the health budget, the education budget, the road and highways budget, that have appeared in the media, are incorrect. A spending to be carried out over a period of seven years is being compared with spending carried out every year. A comparison of both over a seven-year period would have been the right way to go about it. But then things don’t look as bad as they do now.

It has been implied that the government is spending this money in one year, which it clearly isn’t. Second, the analysts forget to mention, perhaps unknowingly, that almost 80% of the project is being financed on a very soft loan from Japan.

Japan has offered a loan more than Rs 79,000 crore to be repaid over 50 years at an interest rate of 0.1% per year [Yes you read that right!]. Further, the loan comes with a 15-year moratorium. What this means is that India does not need to start repaying the loan immediately. It will have to do so fifteen years down the line.

Now what would repaying the loan entail? A loan at an interest 0.1% to be repaid over 50 years essentially means almost no interest is being charged. Once India starts repaying the loan, it would have to pay an EMI of Rs 135 crore per month. In fact, the interest is so low that the total repayment over 50 years will amount to just Rs 81,000 crore. This means an interest component of Rs 2000 crore over fifty years. The government of India can clearly afford this.

Also, this repayment doesn’t start for 15 years and has to be repaid over a period of 50 years. Hence, once we take inflation into account, the Rs 135 crore that will have to repaid 15 years down the line and over a period of 50 years, will be worth much less than it currently is. By then, the project will also start generating some revenue.

The question is why is Japan doing this? It “has been agreed that Shinkansen Technology will be adopted for the project.” In effect, the Japanese government is giving a loan to the Indian government at almost 0% interest, in order to be able to buy technology from Japanese companies.

Also, there is another reason for the Japanese largesse. As Bharat Karnad writes in Why India is Not a Great Power (Yet): “With an eye firmly on China as the main adversary and security challenge, India can synergize its engagement and role with the military, political, and economic capabilities of countries feeling threatened by Beijing to keep China at bay.”

Once these factors are taken into account the bullet train project between Mumbai and Ahmedabad will not be a drain on the government finances. Having said that the government will have to ensure that it does not become a “white elephant” as and when it starts. In order to ensure that the ticket prices of the bullet train will have to be lower than that charged by airlines.

(Vivek Kaul is the author of the Easy Money trilogy. He tweets @kaul_vivek)
The column appeared on Huffington Post India on December 14, 2015

14 December, 2015

One reason why the Real Estate Bill is likely to fail

In Friday’s column I summarised the salient features of the Real Estate Bill. It is clearly a well-intentioned law which seeks to solve the problems faced by consumers when buying a home to live in. But is it the panacea it is being made out to be? I have my doubts on that.

Over the last few days there have been many articles and columns in the media saying that the Real Estate Bill is going to bring acche din for the home buyers.

If you had just read the press release of the government on the union cabinet clearing the Bill and accepting the recommendations of the Select Committee of the Rajya Sabha, you would have come to a similar conclusion.

But after reading the comments of the Select Committee of the Rajya Sabha as well as the Bill, it is safe to say that the acche din for the home-buyers will take some time to come, if they do come at all.

Further, at the very beginning I would like to repeat what I said in my last column, the Bill is very well worded and has solutions for almost all the problems that home-buyers face while dealing with real estate companies. Nevertheless, there are problems with real estate that go beyond the Bill and the Bill at best when it becomes an Act only takes care of some of the issues concerning the real estate sector.

Among others, AW Rabi Bernard of the AIADMK and Naresh Agarwal of the Samajwadi Party dissented to the report submitted by the Select Committee of the Rajya Sabha to which the Bill had been referred to in May earlier this year.
Agarwal in his dissent note said that: “Central government cannot enact any law on the subjects relating to the States and if it does so, it would be treated as interference in the jurisdiction of the states.”

Bernard makes a similar point in his dissent note when he says that the central government should have sent the Real Estate Bill as a model bill to the states which could have then enacted their own bills to regulate the real estate sector. Bernard also said that the Bill casts undue responsibilities on the state government. If cooperative federalism is the way forward, then this clearly is not a bad idea.

The broader point which dissent notes of both Bernard and Agarwal make is that real estate is a sector which needs to be regulated by the state government. In fact, the Bill envisages the same thing. It calls for a real estate regulator (the Real Estate Regulatory Authority to be very precise) to be set up in every state and union territory. And ultimately the success of the Bill as and when it becomes an Act depends on how seriously the respective state governments implement it.

Further, the Select Committee of the Rajya Sabha met the real estate promoters during the course of deliberating over the Bill. In their submission to the Select Committee the real estate promoters were critical on “the delays caused in obtaining the various approvals before starting any real estate project”. Some of the real estate promoters pointed out that it took years to obtain necessary approvals. This ultimately delayed the project and added to its cost as well.

The promoters also told the Select Committee that they should not be held responsible for delays in handing over homes on account of inaction or delayed action of the state governments.

While I have no soft corner for real estate promoters but this is indeed a genuine problem that needs to be sorted if home-buyers need to receive homes they have bought on time. As a recent news-report in the Mint pointed out: “Developers need about 54 to 60 approvals before starting to build, a process that can stretch on for years. They need permissions ranging from an “Ancient Monument” approval to ensure that no monuments of historical significance are near the proposed project, to clearance from the Tree Authority, which must ascertain how many trees, if any, will be cut as a result of construction.”

The Select Committee of the Rajya Sabha in its report talks about single window clearance from the state government to facilitate development of the real estate sector. And how will this be achieved? Section 32(b) of the Bill talks about the real estate regulator in order to facilitate the growth and promotion of a healthy, transparent, efficient and competitive real estate sector, should be making recommendations to the appropriate state government on creation of a single window system ensuring time bound project approvals and clearances for timely completion of real estate projects.

I guess there is nothing beyond this the Real Estate Bill can really do. So it ultimately boils down to the state governments whether they are in the mood to give a single window clearance for real estate projects.

How good are the chances of something like that happening? The entire process of clearing a real estate project through the various stages is a good money making exercise for both state level politicians as well as bureaucrats. So the economic incentive is clearly against a single window clearance. Also, much of the money thus raised is used to fight elections at the state level. The builder-political nexus is a huge source of finance to fight elections at the state level for politicians. Will this nexus break down?

Further, many politicians at the state level are real estate promoters (or builders) themselves or if not promoters they have others operating as fronts. Given this, why would they want a transparent and an efficient real estate sector, when the opaqueness and inefficiency benefits them the most.

So the Real Estate Bill as and when it becomes an Act will definitely move things forward from the consumer point of view. Nevertheless, it is clearly not the panacea that it is being made out to be. Many more things need to be done in order to clean up the real estate sector in this country starting with the cleaning up of political funding.

And that, as I keep saying, is easier said than done.

The column originally appeared on The Daily Reckoning on December 14, 2015

11 December, 2015

All you wanted to know about the Real Estate Bill but were afraid to ask

On December 9, 2015, the union cabinet led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi approved the Real Estate (Regulation and Development) Bill, 2015, as reported by the Select Committee of Rajya Sabha.

In May earlier this year, the bill had been sent to a Select Committee of the Rajya Sabha. The union cabinet has accepted all the suggestions made by the Select Committee. The Bill will now be put up before both the houses of Parliament.

So what does the Bill have to offer? The real estate market in India is an excellent example of information asymmetry where one side has much more information than the other. In this case, the real estate promoters and the real estate agents have much more information than the home-buyers. Even getting something as basic as the going price of an apartment in a given area is very difficult.

The Rajya Sabha Select Committee on the Bill met real estate consumers and this is what it had to say in its report: “These consumers were unanimous in their submission that they have no means to know about the real status of the project for example whether all the approvals have been obtained, who is holding the title of the land, what is the financing pattern of the project and what has been the past record of the builder etc.? As a result, they invested their money without having any information about the project. In many cases, they were not given what was promised to them and in almost all cases the project was delayed.”

The Bill seeks to tackle this information asymmetry and the fact that the real estate sector does not have any single regulator regulating it. The Bill talks about setting up of a real estate regulator (Real Estate Regulatory Authority to be very precise) in every state and union territory. A real estate promoter needs to register a project with the real estate regulator before he starts selling or advertising it.

Projects with the area of land proposed to be developed exceeding five hundred square metres or where more than eight apartments are to be developed, need to be registered with the real estate regulator of the state they are based in.

The application to the regulator needs to be accompanied with details like the real estate projects already launched by the real estate promoter in the past five years. It also needs to be mentioned whether these projects have been completed or are still under development. If the projects has been delayed, the reasons for the delay need to be mentioned.

Over and above this an authenticated copy of the approvals and commencement certificate from the competent authority also needs to be submitted. Other important details like land title, the layout plan for the proposed project, the location details of the project, also need to be submitted to the regulator.

After an approval is granted by the real estate regulator, the real estate promoter will have to upload all these details on to the website of the real estate regulator. Any advertisement of the project should have the precise link to the project details as well.

At the time of booking and issuing an allotment letter to the buyer, the promoter needs to make available to the buyer, the time schedule of completion of the project, including the provisions for civic infrastructure like water, sanitation and electricity.

Many real estate companies over the years have sold homes without the basic amenities in place. In some cases, housing societies have even lacked a water connection and have needed to get water delivered through water tankers almost on a daily basis for years. The Real Estate Bill hopes to correct this. It also hopes to correct the information asymmetry that prevails in the sector up until now.

The Bill also allows any real estate buyer to file a complaint against the real estate promoter or real estate agent with the real estate regulator in case any violation of the provisions of the Bill as and when it becomes an Act.

A major problem with the sector has been a delay in the delivery of homes. One of the major reasons this happens is because real estate companies announce a new project, raise money and then use that money either to complete an earlier project or pay off debt.

This has led to a situation where many projects have been delayed endlessly given that the trick of starting a new project and raising money doesn’t seem to be working anymore. The Bill seeks to correct this situation. The real estate promoter needs to maintain 50% or “such higher percent, as notified by the appropriate government” of the amount raised from the buyers of homes, in a separate bank account.

This money can be only used for the cost of construction and can be withdrawn by the real estate promoter in proportion to the percentage of completion of the project. This is one of the major clauses in the Bill and if implemented correctly can bring huge relief for the buyers.

This clause has been diluted. In the original version of the Bill, the promoter needed to maintain 70% of the amount raised in a separate bank account. The reason offered for this dilution is that in many cases land prices form a major part of the project and maintaining 70% of the money raised in a separate bank account isn’t the best way forward.

Further, up until now the buyer while buying a home had no clue about what exactly was the area that he was paying for. The Bill defines the term carpet area exactly as: ““carpet area” means the net usable floor area of an apartment, excluding the area covered by the external walls, areas under services shafts, exclusive balcony or verandah area and exclusive open terrace area, but includes the area covered by the internal partition walls of the apartment.” Again, if implemented well this clause can bring huge relief to home buyers.

Real estate agents will also need to register with the regulator. This is another good move where not anyone and everyone will jump into become a real estate agent or a broker, as is the case currently.

Also, currently the real estate promoters keep changing the plans as they keep building the project. Once the Bill becomes an Act, this may no longer be possible. Any alterations to sanctioned plans, layout plans and specifications of the buildings or the common areas within the project will need written consent of at least two-thirds of the buyers other than the promoter, who have bought apartments in the building.

This is another buyer friendly measure. On a jovial note what this means is that real estate promoters will have to stop advertising all those swimming pools which are planned at the time a project is launched but never get built.

Up until now buyers have had to pay a huge rate of interest every time they miss a payment to the real estate promoter. But the promoters never pay or at least don’t pay the same high rate of interest, if there is any delay on their part. The Bill essentially calls for the same rate of interest to be paid by the real estate promoter as well as the buyer in the eventuality of a default on either side.

Further, if the promoter violates any one of the provisions under section 3 of the Bill he shall be punishable with imprisonment for a term which may extend up to three years or a fine which may extend up to a further 10% of the estimated cost of the project, or with both. Section 3 of the Bill basically deals with the real estate promoter having to register with the real estate regulator before launching a project and then following a series of buyer-friendly steps.

On paper, the Bill seems to be well thought out and takes care of the all the issues that buyers have had with real estate promoters in the years gone by.

Nevertheless, the implementation of the Bill as and when it becomes and Act, will be carried out at the state government level. And whether state governments carry out the implementation in true letter and spirit remains to be seen. I have a few reservations regarding the implementation of the Bill when it becomes an Act, which I shall discuss in a column next week.

Postscript: The Rajya Sabha website has uploaded the Select Committee’s recommendations as well as the Real Estate Bill in a scanned format instead of uploading the proper report.
If Digital India is the way forward this is clearly not done. Information needs to be made available to everyone in the most accessible way. Hope the concerned authorities are listening.

The column originally appeared on The Daily Reckoning on December 11, 2015