Tag: Black Money | Page 16

20 November, 2014

With Kisan Vikas Patra 2.0 now invest your black money with the government

“If you can’t beat them, join them,” goes the old adage.
The government of India has done just that by relaunching the Kisan Vikas Patra (KVP). An investment in the newly launched KVP will double in 100 months. This means a return of 8.7% per year. It also comes with a lock-in of two and a half years.
There are no tax benefits, neither at the time of investment nor when the investment matures. Initially, the KVPs will be sold through post offices. But over a period of time the government plans to sell KVPs through some designated branches of public sector banks as well.
“The basic aim is to provide an investment opportunity to people who do not know where to invest and put their money into options like Ponzi schemes,” the finance minister Arun Jaitley said at the relaunch of the scheme.
A ponzi scheme is a fraudulent investment scheme in which money is repaid to old investors by using money being brought in by new investors. The scheme runs as long as the money being redeemed by the old investors is lower than the money being brought in by the new investors. The moment this reverses, the scheme collapses.
In the recent past, the country has seen a whole host of Ponzi schemes like Sahara, Saradha, Rose Valley etc. But how will the KVP stop people from investing in Ponzi schemes?
A major reason why people invested in Ponzi schemes over the last few years lies in the fact that real returns (i.e. nominal return minus the rate of inflation) on fixed income investments (like fixed deposits, post office savings schemes etc.) was negative over the last few years.
Between 2008 and 2013, both consumer price inflation and food inflation were greater than 10%, for large periods of time. In this scenario, the returns on offer on fixed income investments were lower than the rate of inflation.
Given this, individuals had to look at other modes of investment, in order to protect the purchasing power of their accumulated wealth. A lot of this money found its way into real estate and gold, which delivered good returns for most of that period. And some of it also found its way into Ponzi schemes, which promised a slightly higher rate of return than fixed deposits and other fixed income investments.
Inflation has fallen over the last few months, and after many years, the real return on fixed income investments is in the positive territory. This is, as true for KVPs, as it is for fixed deposits offered by public sector banks.
Take the case of a fixed deposit of less than Rs 1 crore with a tenure of one year to less than five years, offered by the State Bank of India. Such a deposit pays an interest of 8.75% per year, which is as good as the return of 8.7% per year offered by KVPs.
Further, the fixed deposit doesn’t come with a lock-in, unlike KVPs which have a lock-in of two and a half years. Also, those who have dealt with post offices on a regular basis will know that dealing with (even) public sector banks is relatively easier than dealing with a post office.
So, there is no basic case for investing in a KVP. Also, for those investing for the long term, instruments like PPF which are not taxed on maturity, remain a considerably better bet. Those comfortable with investing in debt mutual funds are also likely to get higher after tax returns in the long term, once indexation(or inflation in simple terms) is taken into account while calculating capital gains.
And as far as not investing in Ponzi schemes is concerned, the returns offered on KVP are not high enough to stop people from investing in Ponzi schemes.
The government also wants to increase savings by getting people to invest in this scheme. As Jaitley said at the launch “Over the last two three years, when economic growth slowed, our savings rate declined…So it is very necessary to encourage people to increase domestic savings.”
The latest RBI annual report points out that “the household financial saving rate remained low during 2013-14, increasing only marginally to 7.2 per cent of GDP in 2013-14 from 7.1 per cent of GDP in 2012-13 and 7.0 per cent of GDP in 2011-12…the household financial saving rate [has] dipped sharply from 12 per cent in 2009-10.”
Household financial savings is essentially the money invested by individuals in fixed deposits, small savings scheme, mutual funds, shares, insurance etc. It has come down from 12% of the GDP in 2009-10 to 7.2% in 2013-14. A major reason for the fall has been the high inflation that has prevailed since 2008. The return on offer on KVPs is similar to other forms of fixed-income investments available in the market and there is no reason that it should lead to higher financial savings.
So that brings us to the question, why did the government launch KVPs then? Before we understand that, here are a few more features of the scheme. The KVPs as mentioned earlier come with a lock-in of two and a half years. They come in denominations of Rs 1000,Rs 5,000, Rs 10,000 and Rs 50,000 and there is no upper limit to the number of KVP certificates that can be bought. Hence, there is no limit to the amount of money that can be invested in the scheme.
As far as fulfilling know your customer requirements are concerned, the gazette notifications states that the individual buying the KYC will have to provide proof of name and residence. No PAN card details will have to be provided.
And here comes the clincher—the KVP will be a bearer instrument, which will not carry the name of the investor. Jaitley stated this at the event to relaunch the KVP. “So people with currency can invest in this,” Jaitley said. “This will be a bearer instrument just like currency and easy to encash,” he added.
So what does this really mean? There are some basic know your customer norms that need to be followed. But the KVP certificate will not carry any name on it, and that essentially makes it an anonymous instrument, once it has been issued.
With this move, the government is hoping that the KVPs will be used to launder black money. In fact, this was precisely the reason the scheme was discontinued in November 2011, a recent report in the Business Standard points out.
Black money over the years has gone into gold and real estate, where it isn’t productive enough. If it finds its way into the coffers of the government, it can be used more productively, or so the government would like to believe.
It would also lead to higher financial savings and in the process lower interest rates. The government will benefit because it will be able to finance the fiscal deficit at lower interest rates. Fiscal deficit is the difference between what a government earns and what it spends and is financed through borrowing.
The fact that the relaunched KVP is a bearer instrument, without the name of the investor and without any need to provide an identity proof, makes it ideal to invest black money in.
As R Jagannathan writes on Firstpost.com “Since it is a bearer certificate without limit, KVPs are likely to be more popular with the better off than just the poor…Rs 1 crore invested in KVPs of the face value of Rs 50,000 each will involve the creation of only 200 certificates. Not a very big pile and very portable for black money holders.” In fact, given the fact that it is a bearer instrument, KVPs can almost be used as a currency as well.
In the old days when the government wanted to access the black money in the country, it used to launch income tax amnesty schemes, where individuals could pay a one time tax on their accumulated black money and escape punishment. In its current form, the KVP looks more like a quasi-amnesty scheme. In fact, it is even better given that no tax needs to be paid on it.
It would have been a good idea to demand the PAN number from those investors who buy KVPs of Rs 1 lakh or more. Nevertheless, the question is, should a government which has strong views on “black money” actually be launching a scheme, which makes it convenient for people to invest black money and that too with the government?

The article originally appeared on www.equitymaster.com on Nov 20, 2014

14 November, 2014

Kaala Dhandha Gore Log – Why politicians are not serious about black money

kaala dhandha Vivek Kaul

Sometime in the mid 1980s, I vaguely remember spending a few days with my family, in one of the many small coal producing towns that dot what is now known as the state of Jharkhand. As was common in those days, we had hired a VCR and had decided to go on a movie watching spree.
One of the movies on the list was Kaala Dhandha Gore Log. The movie was directed by Sanjay Khan. That is the only bit about it that I still remember. I don’t know why, but I found the title of the movie very fascinating and was really looking forward to watching it.
But the adults in the family threw a spanner in the works and banned us “kids” from watching the movie, without really going into the reasons for it. Around three decades later I can speculate as to why we weren’t allowed to watch the movie.
I guess the movie must have had a few scenes with the heroine mouthing the most famous cliché of the eighties,“mujhe bhagwan ke liye chhod do,” or it must have had songs we now call “item numbers”.
Those were days when cable television hadn’t come to India (that would happen only in late 1991, early 1992). Middle class India still hadn’t discovered The Bold and the Beautiful or Santa Barbara for that matter, two shows that went a long way in Indian parents becoming a lot more liberal in deciding what their kids could watch on television.
For some reason the title of the movie has always stayed in my mind, and I have speculated now and then, on its possible storyline. As the title of the movie suggests, the story could possibly be about businesses run by white people (meaning foreigners) which throw up black money.
Three decades later, reel life seems to have turned into real life. There is a great belief in this country that all of the black money generated over the years is now with foreigners. It has been transferred into foreign banks operating out of tax havens. The prime minister Narendra Modi has promised to get the money back.
In an earlier piece I had explained why getting this money back is not a feasible proposition, even though it might sound possible. And a better thing to do would be to simply concentrate on unearthing all the black money that is there in the country. I had also said that a lot of black money which has gone abroad over the years is possibly now being round-tripped to India, given that the chances of earning a good return are better in India.
Nevertheless, there are two questions that arise here? First, why has the black money problem been allowed to become so huge? Second, will the politicians choose to do anything about it? Let me answer the second question first.
Political analyst Mohan Guruswamy shared some very interesting data in a recent column in The Asian Age. Between 2004-05 and 2011-12, national political parties collected Rs 435.87 crore as donations. Of this the Bhartiya Janata Party received Rs 192.47 crore from 1,334 donors and the Congress Rs 172.25 crore from 418 donors.
Corporates made 87% of these donations. Interestingly, over and above this, the parties received donations from unknown contributors as well. The Congress party received a total of Rs 1,185 crore in three financial years (2007-08, 2008-09, 2009-10) and the BJP received around Rs 600 crore during the same period.
It is worth remembering that in the period between 2004-05 and 2011-12, there were two Lok Sabha elections and many elections to state assemblies. 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.
In fact, a study carried out by Centre for Media Studies in March earlier this year estimated that around Rs 30,000 crore would be spent during the 16^th Lok Sabha elections which happened in April and May 2014. Of this total, the government would spend around Rs 7,000-8,000 crore to conduct the elections through the Election Commission and the home ministry.
The remaining amounts would be spent by the candidates contesting the elections and the political parties they belonged to. Candidates standing for Lok Sabha elections are allowed to spend only Rs 70 lakhs for fighting an election in bigger states. For other states, the amount varies from anywhere between Rs 22 lakh to Rs 54 lakh.
These amounts are peanuts when it comes to fighting elections. Even candidates from major political parties fighting state level elections spend more money than this. Candidates stay within these limits officially, but political parties spend much more money outside the set limits, during the course of campaigning.
What this tells us clearly is that political parties have got access to funding beyond what they have declared in the public domain. This money that comes to them is black money. This black money can possibly be the money that politicians have accumulated through corruption or money handed over by crony capitalists looking at possible favours in the days to come.
Hence, a crackdown on black money within the country would lead to the major source of funding for political parties and politicians being impacted. Guruswamy put it very aptly in his column when he said “Their own taps will run dry.”
Now, let me try and answer the first question, which was that why has the black money problem been allowed to become so huge? Why has it been left unattended for so many decades? As Daron Acemoglue and James A Robinson write in Why Nations Fail—The Origins of Power, Prosperity and Poverty “Political institutions determine economic institutions…Extractive political institutions concentrate power in the hands of a narrow elite and place few constraints on the exercise of power. Economic institutions are then often structured by this elite to extract resources from the rest of the society. Extractive institutions thus naturally accompany extractive political institutions. In fact, they must inherently depend on extractive political institutions for their survival.”
So what does this mean in the Indian context? It means that the Income Tax department, which is supposed to be unearthing the black money in this country, is corrupt because the politicians running this country are corrupt. The way the economic incentives of politicians have evolved has led to a situation wherein they simply cannot become active in cracking down on black money.
It explains why only 3.5 crore individuals out of a population of 120 crore pay income tax in this country.
To conclude, the question worth asking is, what will it take for politicians of this country get serious about unearthing black money?

The column originally appeared on www.equitymaster.com on Nov 14, 2014

10 November, 2014

Tackling black money

Vivek Kaul

One of the promises made by the Bhartiya Janata Party(BJP) before the sixteenth Lok Sabha elections was that it will get back all the black money that has left India over the years. This issue really caught the imagination of the voters. After coming to power, the party and its leaders have reiterated that they are still committed to getting back all the black money that has left the Indian shores.
Nevertheless this remains a difficult task given that the money is spread across tax havens all over the world. The economies of tax havens operate on all the money that is stored in their bank accounts, and so they wouldn’t be exactly be bending over their backs to hand over the money back to India. Also, the government needs to decide whether such an operation is feasible or are there better ways of looking at the situation like tackling the black money problem at home rather than trying to get back all the money that has left the Indian shores.
Before we get any further it is important to define what black money is. A ministry of finance white paper published in May 2012 suggests that “There is no uniform definition of black money in the literature or economic theory.” It then goes on to define black money as “ as assets or resources that have neither been reported to the public authorities at the time of their generation nor disclosed at any point of time during their possession.”
In simple English this is money which has been earned but not been declared as an income and hence, no tax has been paid on it. This is precisely how the National Institute of Public Finance and Policy (NIPFP) had defined ‘black money’ in its 1985 report on Aspects of Black Economy. The NIPFP defined ‘black income’ as ‘the aggregates of incomes which are taxable but not reported to the tax authorities’.
Black money is generated from a variety of transactions including criminal activity. Nevertheless a major portion of black money is generated through legal activities. The ministry of finance white paper points out a number of reasons as to why people do not declare their entire income. “For example, a factory owner may under-report production on account of theft of electricity which in turn leads to evasion of taxes…Sometimes the procedural regulations can be such that complying with them may increase the probability of further scrutiny and thereby the incidence of the burden of compliance, creating a perverse incentive not to report at all and remain outside the reported and accounted proportion of the economy,” the report suggests.
Of course, this leads to under-declaration of income and lower tax collection by the government.
Further, sometimes culture and social practices also play a role “in deciding the preferences of citizens between tax compliance and black money generation.” In a country where not declaring income is a norm, generating black money may be totally acceptable. India fits this perfectly, with only 3.5 crore individuals out of a population of 120 crore paying taxes.
So, how does the country get rid of this menace? There are no easy answers to such a complex problem. Nevertheless, there has to be a starting point. The finance ministry white paper calls “for political consensus as well as patience and perseverance”.
The political consensus is the starting point. But are the Indian political parties really interested in weeding out black money? The answer is no. Allow me to elaborate.
A study carried out by the Centre for Media Studies sometime in March this year suggested that around Rs 30,000 crore would be spent during the 16^th Lok Sabha elections which happened in April and May 2014. Of this amount the government of India would spend around Rs 7,000-8,000 crore, the study suggested. The remaining amount would be spent by candidates and their parties.
Candidates are allowed to spend Rs 70 lakh for fighting a Lok Sabha election in bigger states. For other states the amount varies from Rs 22 lakh to Rs 54 lakh. While officially candidates stay within this limit, unofficially they spend a lot more money, as news reports appearing around election time often point out. The question is where does this money come from? A major part of the Indian elections are financed through black money. Some of this money is essentially black money coming back to India from abroad, particularly from places like Dubai. This money is routed back through the hawala route.
Further, the money that politicians earn through corruption finds its way into real estate. Many real estate companies are essentially fronts for the ill-gotten wealth of politicians. Hence, are the politicians willing to disturb the status quo on this front? Are they willing to carry out reforms in the process of election campaign finance? Or it too lucrative an opportunity to let go of?
A serious effort of tackling black money problem will mean looking into real estate transactions, which generate a significant portion of black money in India. The finance minister Arun Jaitley recently talked about making Aadhar cards compulsory for real estate transactions. While that is a good move, there are certain underlying distortions that need to be set right in the real estate sector, which comprises of close to 11% of the Indian GDP.
The stamp duty to be paid on real estate transactions is close to 5% in many states. This leads to individuals under-declaring the value of the transaction when they are selling the real estate they own. Over and above this there are other transactions costs of searching for a property, registration, commissions to be paid etc. These small things are that need to be improved, if the “real estate” sector is to be made more transparent.
Further, when a fresh purchase is being made from a builder, he usually insists on a significant portion of the total deal value to be paid in cash. This is understandable given that builders are usually fronts for or in partnership with local politicians and politicians cannot be declaring their real incomes.
To conclude, if the black money menace has to be tackled in India, the politicians need to clean up their own acts first. Everything else is just noise.

The column originally appeared in The Asian Age/Deccan Chronicle with a different headline on Nov 8, 2014

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

6 November, 2014

Busting a few myths about black money

Vivek Kaul

Growing up in erstwhile Bihar in the late 80s and early 90s, one of the first economic terms that I came across was “black money”. Those were pre Android phones, pre Google, pre internet, pre mobile phones and in large cases even pre landline phone days.
So, what did one do when one had a doubt like this and wanted to know what black money really was? One asked. Parents. Friends. Friends of friends(Okay, these were real friends of friends, not the Facebook variety that we have these days). Neighbourhood uncles and aunts. Bhaiyyas and Didis preparing for the UPSC or the state public service exam. And hopefully an economist.
Ranchi was a small town during those days. My social studies text book even called it a “hill station”. And the chances of finding an economist there, were next to none (not that the chances have gone up now).
So, what you got were vague explanations like, black money was black money. People looked at you and probably wondered, why is the fellow even asking this.
And so the doubt remained. As time went by, as happens in such small towns, everyone who could leave the place, got up and left, including me. Of course, over the years, I figured out what black money was. Black money was black money, one of the few economic terms which are a definition in themselves.
In April 2009, the newspaper I worked for back then, asked me to interview Proffesor R Vaidyanathan of the Indian Institute of Management at Bangalore. The professor put a number to the entire black money debate, which thanks to the Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) was just about erupting then.
He said that around $1.4 trillion of Indian black money was stashed away abroad. This money, he elaborated could be in Switzerland and various British/US islands which are tax havens.
His estimate was based on a report titled Illicit Financial Flows from Developing Countries: 2002—2006, brought out by Global Financial Integrity(GFI), a Washington based non profit organization.
The 2013 report of GFI said that nearly $343 billion of black money left India during 2002-2011. This amounted to around 3% of India’s economic output during the period. The number was particularly high in 2011, when around $84 billion may have left the country, the report suggested.
The GFI’s estimate does not take into account criminal activities as well as corporate tax evasion. These are massive sources of black money. Nevertheless, this is the most comprehensive study of black money which leaves emerging markets like India and hence, does give us a good idea of the amount of black money leaving the country.
In the recent past, prime minister Narendra Modi has taken up the issue of bringing back black money that has left India. In his latest radio broadcast over the weekend he told the country that “As far as black money is concerned, you should have faith on this ‘pradhan sevak’. For me, it is an article of faith. Every penny of the money of poor people in this country, which has gone out, should return. This is my commitment.”
While this is a good stand to take in public, getting back all the ‘black money’ that has gone out, back to India, is not a feasible proposition. The simple reason is that all this money is not lying around at one place.
There is a great belief that all this black money is lying around in Switzerland. This isn’t true. Data released by the Swiss National Bank, the central bank of Switzerland, suggests that Indian money in Swiss banks was at around Rs 14,000 crore (2.03 billion Swiss francs). India was at the 58th position when it came to foreign money in Swiss banks. The total amount had stood at Rs 41,400 crore in 2006.
The reason for this is simple. Over the last few years as black money and Switzerland have come into focus, it would be stupid for individuals or companies sending black money out of India, to keep sending it to Switzerland.
There are around 70 tax havens all over the world. And so this money could be anywhere. Getting all this money back would involve a lot of international diplomacy and cooperation. Also, the question is why would tax havens return this money. Their economies run because of this black money and no one undoes a business model that is working.
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.
Further, in the aftermath of the global financial crisis, interest rates in Western economies have crashed. Switzerland is no exception on this front and hence, Swiss banks have been paying very low interest rates over the last few years. Given this it doesn’t make any sense for Indian black money to go to Switzerland, when there are better returns to be made elsewhere.
Indian black money found its way into places like Switzerland when India had limited investment opportunities. But that is not the case now. Hence, chances are that over the last few years, Indian black money has largely stayed in India where it has been invested in areas like real estate or in metals like gold. Further, chances are that a lot of black money is being round-tripped into India through hawala to be invested in physical assets like land, apartments etc.
Hence, it is important that instead of chasing black money stashed all over the world, the government starts looking at transactions which generate black money in India. The two sectors which generate a lot of black money are real estate and education. No real estate deal is complete without paying a certain amount of the deal amount in “cash”. And even school admissions these days lead to money changing hands in the form of a “donation”.
Why can’t the government start local when it comes to unearthing black money? The answer is fairly straightforward. Many real estate companies and education institutes are run by politicians. Try taking a taxi around Mumbai and you will realize that most so called “education institutes” are run by politicians. The way this works is that the education institute is run by a non profit organization but all the assets(like the building in which the education institute is run) are owned by a private limited company and the education institute pays a rent to the private limited company for using all the assets. This is how money is tunnelled out. Why can’t the government look at these transactions?
It is ironical that we don’t even have a decent estimate for the total amount of black money in this country. As a 2012 white paper released by the ministry of finance stated “There are no reliable estimates of black money generation or accumulation, neither is there an accurate well-accepted methodology for making such estimation.”
If the government is serious about tackling the black money menace it first needs a reasonable estimate of the total amount of black money in this country. It needs a comprehensive mechanism to figure out how black money is being generated and how and where it being hidden.
Further, the central idea in unearthing black money should be to bring more and more people under the tax bracket. The situation is abysmal on this front. As the former finance minister P Chidambaram said in his February 2013 budget speech “There are 42,800 persons – let me repeat, only 42,800 persons – who admitted to a taxable income exceeding Rs 1 crore per year.” This is a totally ridiculous number. There are probably more people making that sort of money just in South Delhi.
If the government is serious about the black money issue, it should be going after these people who are hiding their income and not paying taxes. But the question is can it do that? The income tax department is one of the most corrupt institutions in the country and given half an opportunity they are ready to sell themselves out lock, stock and barrel.
Further, it is worth remembering that a lot of black money that is generated is ultimately used by politicians to fight elections. Hence, it is in their interest that the status quo continues. To conclude, black money stashed away in foreign destinations is not the real issue. The real issue is the black money that continues to be generated and hidden in India and the inability of the government to tackle it.

The article originally appeared on www.equitymaster.com on Nov 6, 2014

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

2 September, 2014

How politicians, banks and builders conspire to keep real estate prices high

“Sex sells,” is an old adage in show business and advertising. If I were to come up with a similar sort of statement when it comes to writing on business and economics it would have to be “real estate sells.” An article on the real estate scenario in India has more chances of being read than anything else.

People who make a living from the real estate industry, be it brokers, real estate consultants or builders, like to tell us time and again that real estate prices are only going to go up. So, it’s time that we forgot about all other ways of spending money and bought a house.
Various reasons are offered, right from shortage of land(they are not making any more of it) to now that Narendra Modi has become the prime minister, everything is going to be fine. In my previous pieces on real estate (you can read a few of them here and here) I have tried to expose several myths that over the years have come to be associated with the sector.
In this piece we will just look at one data point that tells us loud and clear that real estate prices should not be going up, as has been justified by those make a living from real estate, time and again. Look at the following chart:

City	Quarters to Sell Unsold Inventory
Mumbai	12
National Capital Territory	9
Pune	Approx 7.5
Bangalore	7
Hyderabad	8—8.5
Chennai	7
Source: Knight Frank India Real Estate Outlook

“Quarters-to-sell(QTS) can be explained as the number of quarters required to exhaust the existing unsold inventory in the market. The existing unsold inventory is divided by the average sales velocity of the preceding eight quarters in order to arrive at the QTS number for that particular quarter,” the India Real Estate Outlook Report brought out by Knight Frank points out.

What this shows us clearly is that there is a huge amount unsold inventory when it comes to residential apartments across metropolitan India. In fact, what is worse is that this number has been going up over the last few years.

The above table shows us the quarters-to-sell unsold inventory in Mumbai. This stands at 12 in June 2014. What this means is that it will take close to three years to sell the current accumulated inventory of unsold homes in Mumbai. This number was at 5 in December 2011. Hence, Mumbaikars are going slow when it comes to buying homes is a conclusion that can be easily drawn. And that is not surprising given the astronomical prices that builders want for a home in the maximum city.
Here is a similar table for the National Capital Territory (i.e. Delhi and its adjoining areas).

The quarters-to-sell unsold inventory in the NCR in June 2014 stood at a little over nine. This means that it will take a little over two years to sell all the unsold residential apartments in NCR. The number had stood at around 6 in June 2012.
If we look at this graph for other cities like Bangalore, Hyderabad, Pune etc, it is along similar lines, though the curve may not be as upward sloping as it is in the case of Mumbai and NCR.
Take the case of Bangalore where the curve is kind of flat. This tells you that people in Bangalore haven’t slowed down on buying residential homes at the same rate as people in Mumbai and NCR have. Hence, the quarters-to-sell unsold inventory has more or less hovered around 6.

Indeed, what these graphs clearly tell us is that the supply of residential apartments in India’s biggest cities has clearly been more than their demand. And given this Mumbai has 2,13,742 residential apartments which have been built but not sold. The same number in NCR stands at 1,67,000.
Hence, between two of India’s biggest residential markets, the total number of unsold homes stands a little over 3.8 lakhs. In total, the sales fell by 27% during the first six months of 2014, in comparison to the same period last year. Nevertheless, those associated with real estate expect prices to continue to go up. The Knight Frank report forecasts that the real estate prices in Mumbai will “ increase for the entire year (2014) [by] 10.1%.” An increase in prices is forecast for NCR and other cities as well.
The point here is that with so many unsold homes, how can housing prices continue to go up, unless they are rigged? Further real estate
developers are sitting on a huge amount of debt. As a recent report in the Business Standard pointed out “At end of March 2014, the country’s top listed developers were sitting on Rs 39,772 crore of debts.”
As we know most real estate developers in India are not listed on the stock market. Hence, the total amount of their debt must be considerably higher than Rs 39,772 crore. So how are real estate developers going to repay this debt unless they get around to selling the homes they have built? One answer is that they keep launching newer projects, raise money and use that money to repay their previous debt. (I discuss this in detail here). And then launch newer projects to collect money to build their previous projects. So the cycle works.
But in the recent past the number of new launches has been falling. During the first six months of 2014, the number of new launches fell by 32% in comparison to the same period last year, the Knight Frank report points out. Hence, new launches as a source of funds seems to have slowed down, but they do bring in some money nonetheless.
Another possible explanation is lending by banks. Bank lending to the commercial real estate sector has been growing at a much faster rate than overall lending. Between July 26, 2013 and July 25, 2014, lending by banks to commercial real estate grew by 18.2%. In comparison, the overall lending grew by just 11.3%.
With newer launches slowing down, the only possible explanation for this lending is that banks are essentially giving fresh loans to real estate companies so that the companies can repay their old loans. This has allowed real estate companies to not cut prices on their unsold inventory. If bank loans had not been so forthcoming, the real estate companies would have to sell off their existing inventory to repay their bank loans. And in order to do that they would have to cut prices.
Further, most real estate companies as we know are a front for politicians. During the Congress led United Progressive Alliance, a huge number of scams and a lot of corruption happened. Hence, the conspiracy theory I would like to offer here is that the money that politicians got through various rounds of corruption during the UPA rule has also found its way into the real estate market. This has allowed real estate companies to continue holding prices at high levels, despite supply far outstripping demand.
As I mentioned in the previous piece I wrote on real estate, real estate consultants make money from real estate companies and hence, it is but natural for them to keep telling us that prices will continue to go up. Nevertheless, data from the International Monetary Fund shows that real estate prices in India between the period January to March 2014, fell by 9%. This was the most in a sample of 52 countries. (Click here for table) The IMF of course does not have an incentive to ensure that real estate prices in India continue to remain high.
To conclude dear reader, if you still have the money to buy a house, this is the time to drive a hard bargain.

The article originally appeared on www.Firstbiz.com on September 2, 2014

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