Month: March 2017 | Page 4

3 March, 2017

Decoding Cash Withdrawal Fee: Do Private Banks Want Only Millennials as Customers?

If you are the kind who likes to visit his or her bank branch regularly to withdraw or deposit cash, the message from the big three new generation private sector banks (ICICI Bank, HDFC Bank and Axis Bank) is very clear. They do not want you to come visiting their branches. Or at least not very regularly.

Starting March 1, 2017, HDFC Bank, will charge you a minimum of Rs 150 in case you carry out more than four cash transactions (withdrawals as well as deposits) a month in your home branch. In case of Axis Bank and ICICI Bank, the charge has been in effect from early January 2017, when it was re-introduced. While ICICI Bank allows the first four transactions to be free, in case of Axis Bank the limit is set at five transactions.

The move is likely to impact senior citizens and others who are still not used to the idea of withdrawing money from an ATM or carrying out digital transactions using their debit cards, the most.

Also, the banks will charge Rs 5 per Rs 1,000 as a fee in order to allow you to withdraw or deposit cash, once the number of free transactions has been exhausted. This essentially means a charge of 0.5 per cent. This is subject to a minimum charge of Rs 150 for every transaction. Hence, the 0.5 per cent charge actually comes into effect only if you withdraw or deposit more than Rs 30,000 (Rs 150 divided by 0.5 per cent) at one go.

Now what is the logic of having a minimum charge of Rs 150, which is not low by any stretch of imagination? The idea is basically to tell the bank customers to come to the branch only if a substantial amount of cash needs to be withdrawn or deposited, even after the free transactions have been exhausted.

Let’s say you want to withdraw Rs 5,000 from the bank. This would mean paying the bank a charge of Rs 150 or 3 per cent of the withdrawn amount. Hence, it would just make sense to go to the ATM and withdraw the money, free of cost, and not drop-in at the branch.

From the point of view of the bank, this move makes immense sense, given that the cost of servicing a customer at the branch is the highest. A November 2015 report in The Hindu points out: “On an average, a branch banking transaction costs a bank about Rs 40-50 per customer, while an internet or mobile transaction brings down the costs to Rs 15-30 per customer.”

Also, the move suggests that the new generation private sector banks are only looking for a certain kind of customer, the one who does not want to come to the branch.

As R Gandhi, one of the deputy governors of the Reserve Bank of India had said in an August 2016 speech: “There is a new generation of young people (known as millennials). They have different expectations and their ways of interacting with banks are also different. They prefer not to come to banks for banking services. Rather they would prefer to avail the services through online and social media based platforms.” This is the kind of customer that the new generation private sector banks want.

If you are the kind who likes to visit his bank branch regularly, then you are clearly not welcome at new generation private sector banks. Public sector banks are the place for you.

Post script: Kotak Mahindra Bank, the fourth largest new generation private sector banks, will do the same as the Big three when it comes to cash transactions, from April 1, 2017, onwards. The details can be checked out here.

The column was originally published on Business Standard online on March 3, 2017

2 March, 2017

Mr Jaitley, Informal Economy Doesn’t Necessarily Mean Black Economy

The finance minister Arun Jaitley has been at the forefront in trying to defend the demonetisation or notebandi decision of the Modi government.

He recently said in London: “Demonetisation was a move to change the Indian normal… a new normal had to be created. A predominantly cash economy has now to be substituted with a digital economy, which will bring more money into the banking system and lead to better revenue generation; the integration of the informal economy with the more formal one is now taking place… The post-demonetisation regime is actually going to generate a far bigger GDP in the long run.” He also said that the arguments being made in favour of the cash economy were absolutely trivial.

There is much that is wrong with the above statement, but in this column, I would like to just concentrate on the part that I have marked in red in the above paragraph. Before we get into anything else it is important to define the meaning of the term “informal economy”. Here is a basic definition. It is that part of the economy which is not really monitored by the government and hence, it is not taxed. But there are several nuances to this as well, which we shall see during the course of this column.

In Jaitley’s binary world, the formal economy is good because it brings in tax to the government, and the informal economy is bad, because it does not bring in tax to the government. Demonetisation has managed to create a cash shortage which Jaitley believes will force a large section of the informal economy to move towards becoming formal and allow the government to tax them.

The trouble is economics is never so straightforward. As economist Jim Walker of Asianomics wrote in a research note: “There is nothing intrinsic that says that the informal economy is a less effective or beneficial source of activity than the formal economy.” Allow me to elaborate on this.

Ritika Mankar Mukherjee and Sumit Shekhar of Ambit Capital wrote in a recent research note: “India’s informal sector is large and labour-intensive. The informal sector accounts for ~40% of India’s GDP and employs close to ~75% of the Indian labour force.” The point is that the informal sector forms a significant portion of India’s economy and employs three fourths of India’s workforce. There are other estimates which say that the informal sector employs more than 75 per cent of India’s workforce.

Hence, notebandi has ended up disturbing 75 per cent or more of India’s labour force. The cash crunch that has followed has severely disrupted the informal sector. As Mukherjee and Shekhar write in a recent research note: “Panipat in Haryana is the textile hub of North India. It is a ~Rs 31,000 crore industry with Rs 60,000 crore worth of goods being exported. It employs ~350,000 labourers. Whilst our interviews suggested that the export-focused units were largely unaffected, the domestic component of the industry saw business fall by 40-80% as this component of the business is more cash-reliant. As a result, almost half of the 350,000 labourers employed in the region have been temporarily laid off as demand has collapsed in the domestic market and there is no cash to pay the wages.” Similarly, in Tirupur, another textile hub, “the units are running only three days a week (compared to 7 days before demonetisation) due to the lack of demand,” the analysts point out.

This is something that cannot and should not be taken lightly. Jaitley in his London speech said that notebandi will lead to better revenue generation for the government. This means that the government will end up collecting more taxes.

The assumption here is that informal sector does not pay taxes. This is not totally correct. As I said the argument is slightly more nuanced than this. As I write in my new book India’s Big Government-The Intrusive State and How It is Hurting Us: “The National Manufacturing Policy of 2011 estimated that the number of Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) in India stood at over 26 million (2.6 crore) units. They employed around 59 million (5.9 crore) people. This means that any SME, on an average, employed 2.27 individuals. The Boston Consulting Group estimated that 36 million (3.6 crore) SMEs (or what it calls micro-SMEs) employ over 80 million (8 crore) employees. This means that any SME, on an average, employs 2.22 individuals.”

What this clearly tells us is that the size of an average Indian SME is small, in fact, very small and it is a part of the informal sector. They employ around 2.2-2.3 individuals on an average. These firms basically employ the owner and one more person, on an average. Interestingly, nearly two-thirds of these firms are own-account enterprises without any hired workers.

The contention is that these people who are a part of the informal economy do not pay any taxes, this includes income tax. The question is do they need to pay an income tax? Let’s look at some data. Take a look at Figure 1. It shows the money being made by different categories of people.

Figure 1:

Take a look at the self-employed (remember two-thirds of small and medium enterprises in India are own-account enterprises without any hired workers). 96 per cent of self-employed earn an income of up to Rs 2,40,000 per year. Individuals come under the tax bracket only if they earn more than Rs 2,50,000 lakh per year.

Almost 100 per cent of the casual labour which works in the informal sector earns an income of up to Rs 2,40,000 per year. Hence, a major part of the individuals who work in the informal sector do not need to pay income tax. Given this, even if the government was in a position to collect income tax from these individuals, it wouldn’t be able to do so. The point being informal economy does not necessarily mean black economy.

Also, it is worth mentioning here that when these individuals who form a bulk of the informal economy spend the money they earn, they do pay indirect taxes which are built into the products being sold. Over and above this, the money they spend is an income for companies and individuals who are a part of the formal economy and pay income tax. Long story short-the situation is not as simplistic as Jaitley wants us to believe.

Having said this, it does not mean that the entire informal sector is kosher. There are individuals and enterprises who need to pay tax but they aren’t. It is these individuals and enterprises that the income tax department should be going after.

Also, more revenue for the government and going cashless doesn’t necessarily mean a good thing. As Walker puts it: “There is every reason to worry about the fact that moves towards a cashless economy will benefit banks (transactions cost) and governments (more taxes). The apologists for demonetisation were keen on the fact that it might prove to be an easier way for government to collect revenues. Governments come and governments go and one thing is for sure, they do not all spend money wisely. Giving them more access to individuals’ money is demonstrably not unequivocally a ‘good thing’.”

And that is something worth thinking about.

The column originally appeared on Equitymaster on March 2, 2017

1 March, 2017

Believe in Indian GDP Growth at Your Own Peril

Yesterday (i.e. February 28, 2017), the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MOSPI), published the quarterly estimates of the Gross Domestic Product(GDP) for October to December 2016.

As per this estimate, the GDP grew by 7 per cent for the October to December 2016 period, in comparison to the same period in 2015. In fact, MOSPI estimates that the Indian GDP for 2016-2017 will grow by 7.1 per cent.

What this tells us is that there has been almost no impact of demonetisation on economic growth (as measured by GDP growth), even during the period of October to December 2016, when demonetisation happened.

The question is how believable is this? One way of measuring the GDP is through the expenditure method. Under this method, the GDP is obtained by adding private consumption expenditure, government consumption expenditure, investments and net exports (imports minus exports). The private consumption expenditure forms a bulk of the GDP measured through this method.

The interesting thing is that the private consumption expenditure (at constant prices) for the October to December 2016, rose by 10.1 per cent, in comparison to the same period in 2015. This is the second fastest rise since June 2011. The data for the new GDP series adopted in January 2015 is only available up until then. GDP at constant prices essentially takes inflation into account.

Take a look at Figure 1. It shows the one year growth rate of private consumption expenditure, over the last five years.

Figure 1

The private consumption expenditure grew by 10.1 per cent in the October to December 2016 period. This, as mentioned earlier is the second fastest growth rate over the last five years. This seems unbelievable given that between November 9 and December 30, 2016, the currency in circulation had gown down dramatically, as Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 paper notes were demonetised and suddenly had no value.

Figure 2 shows this.

Figure 2

With the currency under circulation crashing, there wasn’t enough currency going around to carry out transactions. A bulk of the transactions in the Indian economy are carried out in cash. As per a PwC report cash/currency accounts for 98 per cent of consumer payments by volume in India. Take a look at Figure 3.

Figure 3

The Economic Survey of 2016-2017 points out: “The Watal Committee has recently estimated that cash accounts for about 78 percent of all consumer payments.” Hence, cash/currency accounts for bulk of consumer payments in India.

Demonetisation essentially rendered 86.4 per cent of the currency in circulation useless overnight. This made consumer transactions very difficult to carry out. While, the government did replace the money rendered useless with new money, but initially only Rs 2,000 notes made it to the financial system. These notes were very difficult to use because people found it difficult to give change, when almost no new Rs 500 notes were available. Hence, they were as good as useless for most of November and December 2016.

In this environment, how did private consumption expenditure grow by 10.1 per cent, the second fastest since June 2011, is a question worth asking?

One possibility is that people may have borrowed and bought things and in the process private consumption grew. Now take a look at Figure 4. It essentially shows the growth in retail loans given by banks between October and December across several years. Retail loans include loans given by banks to buy cars, two-wheelers, consumer durables, homes, credit card outstanding etc. They are a good measure of how robust the private consumption scene in the country is.

Figure 4

The growth in retail loans between October and December 2016 was almost flat at 0.5 per cent. This isn’t surprising given that most of the retail banking staff of banks was busy dealing with all the cash making it back to the banks because of demonetisation. What the figure also tells us is that the growth in retail loans between October to December 2016 has been the slowest in last five years.

Figure 4 clearly tells us that people did not borrow and spend between October and December 2016. So, the question is where did the growth in private consumption expenditure come about? One theory that has been offered is that many people bought a lot of gold using their old Rs 500 and Rs 1,000. The goldsmiths helped them by backdating their purchases.

This is one of those things that sounds to be true as soon as one hears it. But what does data tell us about this? India does not produce any gold of its own. If a lot of gold has been bought in this way, then the gold import numbers should go up in the months to come. The initial evidence on this front suggests otherwise.

Take a look at Figure 5.

Figure 5

Gold imports were high in November 2016 because of the festive season as well as the marriage season. And typically gold imports are high in November. If a lot of gold was bought by those who converted their black money held in the form of old Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes into gold, then gold imports should have picked up in December 2016 and January 2017, but they haven’t. They are considerably lower in comparison to December 2015 and January 2016. This basically puts the gold theory out of the window.

The other theory offered in explanation to private consumption expenditure going up has been that people bought a lot of iPhones after demonetisation was announced. How can the sale of one product push up GDP numbers is beyond my comprehension, but I will not get into that. While Apples sales did go up in October (pre-demonetisation) and November (eight days with no demonetisation), the sales crashed in December because of lack of cash in the financial system.

As a newsreport in The Economic Times points out: “After a cracker of sales in October-November, which heralded strong growth for that quarter, purchases of iPhones dwindled mainly because of the lack of cash, which had fuelled buying before demonetisation. That’s forced Apple to scale down its India revenue target to $2 billion for its fiscal year (October 2016-September 2017) from $3 billion.”

Also, the sales of many consumer goods companies fell during the period. (You can read about it here).

Essentially what all this tells us is that it is very difficult to believe that private consumption expenditure grew by 10.1 per cent during October to December 2016, despite demonetisation. There is something that clearly does not add up here. In fact, take a look at Figure 6. It shows what portion of the GDP is made up by private consumption expenditure.

Figure 6

As can be seen from Figure 6, the private consumption expenditure share in GDP is at very high levels. Also, the kind of jump seen between the period of three months ending September 2016 and the period of three months ending December 2016, has never been seen before.

And given that private consumption expenditure forms a bulk of the GDP, all in all, this tells us that there is something that just doesn’t smell right about India growing by 7 per cent in October to December 2016, when the currency situation was very tight.

The column originally appeared on Equitymaster on March 1, 2017.

1 March, 2017

Believe in Indian GDP Growth at Your Own Peril

Yesterday (i.e. February 28, 2017), the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MOSPI), published the quarterly estimates of the Gross Domestic Product(GDP) for October to December 2016.

Take a look at Figure 1. It shows the one year growth rate of private consumption expenditure, over the last five years.

Figure 1

Figure 2 shows this.

Figure 2

Figure 3

In this environment, how did private consumption expenditure grow by 10.1 per cent, the second fastest since June 2011, is a question worth asking?

Figure 4

Take a look at Figure 5.

Figure 5

Also, the sales of many consumer goods companies fell during the period. (You can read about it here).

Figure 6

The column originally appeared on Equitymaster on March 1, 2017.

1 March, 2017

America First?

Moments after taking over as the 45th President of the United States on January 20th, Donald Trump said: “From this day forward, a new vision will govern our land. From this day forward, it’s going to be only America first, America first.”

The irony is that this insular approach comes from the President of a country which was built primarily by outsiders. Countries and civilizations which do well, never do so in isolation is a basic point that Trump seems to have forgotten.

Take the case of the British and how they managed to cross the Atlantic Ocean in order to reach North America. As Thomas Sowell writes in Wealth, Poverty and Politics: “When the British first confronted the Iroquois [a group of tribes] on the east coast of North America, the mental and material resources at the disposal of these two races were by no means confined to what they had developed themselves.”

So, what did British have access to, which they hadn’t produced themselves? As Sowell writes: “The British had been able to navigate across the Atlantic, in the first place, by using the compass invented in China, doing mathematical calculations with a numbering system from India, steering with rudders invented in China, writing on paper invented in China, using letters created by the Romans, and ultimately prevailing in combat using gunpowder, also invented in China. The Iroquois had no comparably wide cultural universe.”

The point being that Britain would not have managed to capture large parts of the world, including North America from the native tribes, without having access to all the foreign technology and the ideas that it had. And this was possible because Great Britain had always been a very open economy.

This ensured that many things that originated in Asia over the centuries became a part of the British and the European cultures. As Sowell points out, among the many things that originated in Asia and became a part of the European culture included, papers, bells, printing, gunpowder, the compass, rudders, spaghetti, chess, playing cards and so called Arabic numerals, which actually originated in India.

Without many of these things, the British wouldn’t have been able to crossover to North America. And if they hadn’t been able to do that, there would have been no United States of America. Hence, technologies and ideas from outside contributed a lot in Great Britain ruling large parts of the world, including North America. The founding fathers of the United States and the leaders that followed did not forget this, and their openness to ideas and individuals from outside, continued.

Donald Trump now wants to undo much of this. The question is can the United States afford this? As far as it comes to making things, the United States can’t compete with much of the world. This is clearly visible in the fact that it imports significantly more than what it exports. And this has led to a severely disgruntled workforce.

Nevertheless, one area where the United States clearly rules, is in the world of ideas and technology. As Ruchir Sharma writes in Breakout Nations—In Pursuit of the Next Economic Miracles: “US strength in technology looks overwhelming in comparison with even the fastest-rising emerging markets, and in comparison with Japan and Taiwan, nations that also spend heavily on tech research and development but generate a lot less growth out of it.”

Also, unlike Japan’s insular technology culture, the United States has a very open culture. As Sharma writes: “Silicon Valley is so rich in immigrant Indian and Chinese talent that it’s little surprise Google has travelled so well. The broader ecosystem that nurtures tech-start-ups, including the venture capital industry, the top-notch university system and the strong legal protection for intellectual property , is also arguably stronger in the United States than anywhere else in the world.”

America’s lead in technology is its best chance to pull the country out of the rut that it currently is. And the tech industry cannot continue to thrive, if only America and Americans come first. The sooner Donald Trump understands this, the better it is going for US long term growth.

The column originally appeared in the Bangalore Mirror on March 1, 2017