Ten Things to Remember While Buying a Home

This piece emerged out of a couple of WhatsApp conversations I had over this weekend, along with a few emails that I have received over the last few months.

From these conversations and in trying to answer the emails, I have tried to develop a sort of checklist of things to keep in mind, while buying a home. Of course, as I have said in the past, when it comes to personal finance, each person’s situation is unique, and which is why it’s called personal finance.

Nevertheless, there are a few general principles that can be kept in mind. Also, this list like all checklists, is complete to the extent of things I can think of.

So, let this not limit your thinking and the points that you need to keep in mind.

Here we go.

1) If you are buying the house as an investment (not in my scheme of things, but nonetheless), please learn how to calculate the internal rate of return on an investment. Believe me, you will thank me for the rest of your life.

Also, keep track of the cost of maintaining a house and other costs that come with it. Only then will you be able to know the real rate of return from investing in a house.

Otherwise, you will talk like others do, I bought it at x and I sold it at 2x, and get lost in the big numbers, thinking you have made huge returns. While this sort of conversation sounds impressive, it doesn’t mean anything.

2) Don’t buy a house to generate a regular income. The home rentals in the bigger cities have come down post covid. Even if they haven’t, the rental yields (rent divided by market price) continue to be lower than what you would earn if you had that money invested in a fixed deposit (despite such low interest rates).

Of course, the corollary here is that as a landlord you choose to declare your rental income and pay an income tax on it. Many landlords prefer to be totally or partially paid in cash and choose not to pay any income tax. 

3) From what I have been able to gather from my conversations, people in a few cities are still flipping houses. In fact, the trick is to invest before a project gets a RERA approval and then sell out as soon as the approval comes through. This reminds me of the old days when the builder never really knew the people who ended up living in the homes that had been built.

Anyway, if you are flipping homes, do remember that many people caught in the real estate shenanigans of 2009 to 2011, are still waiting for their homes. Many of them are investors. So, if you are flipping homes, do take some basic precautions like not betting your life on any one deal. As the old cliche goes, don’t put all your eggs in one basket. 

4) Also, do remember that you are an individual and the builder is a builder. While many stories of David beating the Goliath have come out in the media, many more stories of Goliaths having crushed Davids, never made it to the media.

It was, is and will remain, an unequal fight. Do remember that. For a builder this is the life that he leads, you, dear reader, on the other hand, have many other things to do. And you are looking for a home to live in, not a builder to take on. So, be careful.

5) One question that I often get is, which bank/housing finance company should I take a loan from. I don’t think this should matter much. Most big banks and housing finance companies charge similar interest rates. As we say in Hindi, bus unees bees ka farak hai.

So, go to the financial institution which seems to be the most convenient to you.

6) One story being pushed in the media is that you should buy a home now because interest rates are low. Among many dumb reasons for buying a home, this is by far the dumbest. Interest rates on home loans are not fixed but floating interest rate loans. If the cost of borrowing for banks and housing finance companies goes up, so will the interest rate on floating rate home loans.

No one can predict which way interest rates will go in the medium to long-term (That doesn’t stop people from trying. Many economists build careers around this). So, currently, the interest rate on a home loan is around 7% per year or thereabouts. If you are buying a home, make sure that you have the capacity to keep repaying the EMI even at an interest rate of 10% per year. This is very important.

7) How do you structure the amount you pay for the home? What portion of the home price should be a downpayment? What portion of the home price should be your home loan? These are very important questions. The answer varies from person to person. Nevertheless, the one general principle I would like to state here is that don’t dip into your retirement savings as far as possible to pay for the downpayment.

It might seem like a good idea with retirement far away and your parents encouraging you to do so because they did the same and it worked out fine for them. Nevertheless, do remember that on an average the current generation will live longer than its parents, and the family support that your parents had or will have in their old age, you may never have.

8) Also, from the point of diversification, it makes sense not to bet all your savings on making the downpayment for a home. Do remember, no job or source of income is safe these days. Further, do ensure that at any point of time you have the ability to pay six to 12 EMIs, without having a regular source of income.

Other than being able to continue repaying your EMI, it will also help you have some time to look for a job or another source of income, if the current one goes kaput.  Money in the bank, buys you time, which helps you make better decisions in life.

And most importantly, if your EMI is more than a third of your take home salary or monthly income, rest assured you are in for trouble on the financial front.

9) If you want to buy a home to live in, go for a ready to move in home. I have seen completion dates for RERA approved projects going beyond 2025 in Mumbai.

The other advantage with a ready to move in home is that some people are already living there and if there is some problem with the building (not a huge deal in India) then there are many more people who have a stake in solving the problem (as convoluted as this might sound). As always there is strength in numbers. 

10) Finally, be sure why you are buying a home. You want to live close to your place of work. You want your child to have some stability in life. You don’t like the idea of moving homes, every couple of years. And so on.

But please don’t buy a home because your parents, in-laws, extended family or relatives, expect you to do so and it gives them something to chat up on or some meaning to their lives. These are financially difficult times and making the biggest financial decision of your life to impress others, isn’t the smartest thing to do possibly.

To conclude, as I said in the beginning this isn’t a complete list by any stretch of imagination. Each person’s situation is unique. Also, you may not end up with a tick mark on all these points mentioned above and you may still end up buying a home. But the advantage will be that you will know clearly where you are placed in the financial scheme of things.

The points essentially help you think in a structured way to arrive at a decision. They do not make the decision for you. That you will have to do.

PS: Don’t know if you noticed that the terms house and home, have been used at different places. Hope you appreciate the difference between the two. 

Everybody Loves a Good Interest Rate Cut…Except the Savers

My main life lesson from investing: self-interest is the most powerful force on earth, and can get people to embrace and defend almost anything – Jesse Livermore.

Late in the evening of March 31, the department of economic affairs, ministry of finance, put out a press release saying that the interest rates on small savings schemes for the period April to June 2021, have been cut.

The social media got buzzing immediately. And almost everyone from journalists to economists to analysts praised the decision. It was seen as yet another effort by the government to push down interest rates further.

With the state of the economy being where it is, lower interest rates are expected to perk up economic growth. People are expected to borrow and spend more. Corporates are expected to borrow and expand. At lower interest rates individuals who have already taken on loans will see their EMIs go down, leaving more cash in hand, and they are likely to spend that money, helping the economy grow.

That’s how it is expected to work, at least in theory. Hence, everybody loves a good interest rate cut… except the savers.

On April 1, the social media woke up to the finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman’s tweet announcing that “interest rates of small savings schemes… shall continue to be at the rates which existed in the last quarter of 2020-2021.” She further said that the order had been issued by oversight and would be withdrawn.

Later in the day, the department of economic affairs put out a press release to that effect.

The fact that lower interest rates are good for the economy is only one side of the story. They also hurt the economy in different ways. People who are dependent on interest income for their expenditure (like the retired senior citizens) see their incomes fall and have to cut down on their expenditure. This impacts private consumption negatively. 

While this cannot be measured exactly, it does happen. Also, a bulk of India’s household savings (close to 84% in 2019-20) are made in fixed deposits, provident and pension funds, life insurance policies and small savings schemes. Lower interest rates bring down the returns of all these products and this negatively impacts many savers.

As the economist Michael Pettis writes about the relationship between interest rate and consumption in case of China, in The Great Rebalancing:

“Most Chinese savings, at least until recently, have been in the form of bank deposits…Chinese households, in other words, should feel richer when the deposit rate rises and poorer when it declines, in which case rising rates should be associated with rising, not declining, consumption.”

The same logic applies to India as well, with lower interest rates being associated with declining consumption, at least for a section of the population.

This is not to say that interest rates should be higher than they currently are (that is a topic for another day), nonetheless the fact that lower interest rates impact savers and consumption negatively is a point that needs to be made and it rarely gets made. I made this point in a piece I wrote for livemint.com, yesterday. 

Also, borrowing is not just about lower interest rates. It is more about the confidence that the borrower has in his economic future and the ability to keep paying the EMI over the years. I wrote about this in the context of home loans, a few days back.

This leaves us with the question that why doesn’t anyone talk about the negative side of low interest rates. The answer lies in the fact that they don’t have an incentive to do so. Let’s try and look at this in some detail.

1) Fund managers: Fund managers love lower interest rates because it leads a section of the savers, in the hope of earning a higher return, to move their savings from bank fixed deposits to mutual funds and portfolio management services which invest in stocks. In the process, their assets under management go up. More money coming into the stock market also tends to push up stock prices.

All in all, this ensures that fund managers increase their chances of making more money and hence, they love lower interest rates because their acche din continue.

2) Analysts: Analysts love lower interest rates because it leads a section of the savers, in the hope of earning a higher return, to move their savings from bank fixed deposits to stocks. In order to buy stocks, they need to open a demat account with a brokerage. When the new investors buy stocks, the brokerage earns commissions.

Further, it also means that the interest cost borne by corporates on their debt goes down, leading to higher profits. The stock market factors this in and stock prices go up. Given this, analysts have an incentive to love interest rate cuts.

3) Corporates: Do I need to explain this? Lower interest rates lead to a lower interest outflow on debt that a corporate has taken on and hence, higher profits or lower losses for that matter. This explains why corporate honchos are perpetually asking the Reserve Bank of India to cut the repo rate or the interest rate at which it lends to banks.

4) Banks: Banks love lower interest rates simply because at lower interest rates the value of the government bonds they hold goes up. Interest rates and bond prices are inversely related. Higher bond prices mean higher profits for banks or lower losses in case of a few public sector banks. This is why bankers almost always come out in support of interest rate cuts.

This also explains why the bankers hate the idea of small savings schemes offering higher returns than fixed deposits. Lower interest rates on small savings schemes pushes the overall interest rates in the financial system downwards. 

5) Economists: Most economists are employed by stock brokerages, mutual funds, banks, corporates or think tanks. As explained above, stock brokerages, mutual funds, banks and corporates, all benefit from lower interest rates. If your employer benefits from something, you also benefit in the process. Hence, your views are in line with that.

When it comes to think tanks, many are in the business of manufacturing consent for corporates. Their economists act accordingly. 

6) Journalists: With the media being dependent on corporate advertising as it is, it is hardly surprising that most journalists love interest rate cuts. Further, the main job of anchors on business news channels is to keep people interested in the stock market because that is what brings in advertising. And this can only happen, if stock prices keep going up. In this environment, anything, like interest rate cuts, that drives up stock prices, is welcomed.

Of course, some mainstream TV news channels also run propaganda for the government. So, in their case every government decision needs to be justified. That is their incentive to remain in the good books of the government.

7) Government: The central government will end up borrowing close to Rs 25 lakh crore during 2020-21 and 2021-22. Hence, even a 1% fall in the interest rate at which it borrows, will help it save Rs 25,000 crore. It clearly has an incentive in loving low interest rates. 

The point is everyone mentioned above tends to benefit if interest rates keep going down or continue to remain low. Further, they are organised special interests with direct access to the mainstream media. The savers though many more in number aren’t organised to put forward their point of view.

Also, it is easier to do the math around the benefits of interest rate cuts and low interest rates than its flip side. As economist Friedrich Hayek said in his Nobel Prize winning lecture, there is a tendency to simply disregard those factors which “cannot be confirmed by quantitative evidence” and after having done that to “thereupon happily proceed on the fiction that the factors which they can measure are the only ones that are relevant.”

That’s the long and the short of it. 

On Homes and Home Loans

Yesterday evening I had gone to meet a cousin who lives in the Western suburbs of Mumbai. All along the way, there were billboards of Kotak Mahindra Bank advertising its home loans, which are available at an interest rate of 6.65%.

While the interest rate of 6.65% comes with terms and conditions, such low interest rates have rarely been seen before. It is possible to get a home loan these days at an interest rate of 7%.

A few things have happened because of these low rates. There have been scores of stories in the media citing surveys where everyone from women to HNIs to NRIs to millennials seem to want to buy a house and they want to do it right here and right now. 

Of course, these surveys have been carried out by real estate consultants, whose very survival depends on the real estate sector doing well. Incentives as they say.

Low interest rates on home loans also have led to stories in the media suggesting that this is best time to buy a house. The other thing that has happened is that analysts have been recommending stocks of home finance companies (HFCs).

The logic being that at lower interest rates people will take on more home loans. This will help the loan book of HFCs grow, making them good investment bets. How easy all this sounds? But is it?

All this stems from the flawed assumption that people borrow more at lower interest rates and live happily ever after. Let’s see if that is true or not.

Take a look at the following graph. It plots the increase in home loans outstanding during the period April to January, over the years.

 Source: Author calculations on data from Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy.

What does the above graph tell us? It tells us that despite very low home loan interest rates, the increase in home loans given by banks between April 2020 to January 2021, stood at Rs 78,577 crore. This was around half of the increase of Rs 1,56,362 crore between April 2019 to January 2020.

Even between April 2018 and January 2019, the increase stood at Rs 1,46,227 crore. Clearly, people borrowed much more when interest rates were higher. Hence, the logic that people borrow more when interest rates are lower, basically goes for a toss.

In fact, the increase between April 2020 to January 2021, was the second lowest in six years in absolute terms. The lowest increase of Rs 74,837 crore was between April 2016 to January 2017. This period included demonetisation when banks had more or less stopped doing everything else and concentrated on taking back the demonetised notes from the public.

If we look at the period between April 2016 to October 2016, before demonetisation happened, the increase in home loans had stood at Rs 64,501 crore. Clearly the disbursal of home loans slowed down in the post demonetisation months.

There is another point that needs to be made here. Other than banks, HFCs or home finance companies, also give out home loans. Typically, banks give out two-thirds of the home loans and HFCs, the remaining third. Nevertheless, the last couple of years haven’t been good for a few HFCs. This has meant that some of the business of home loans has moved from HFCs to banks.

Once we take these factors into account then we can conclude that the increase in home loans during this financial year, has been the worst in six years. And this despite the extremely low interest rates. In percentage terms, the increase in outstanding home loans during this financial year has stood at 5.97%, the lowest in six years, and the only time the increase has been less than 10%. 

Why is that the case? For economists and analysts, the interest rate is the most important parameter that people look at while taking a home loan, nevertheless, a little bit of common sense tells us that this isn’t the case.

Let’s try and understand this through an example. As per HDFC, India’s largest HFC, their average home loan size is Rs 28.5 lakh. Their average loan to value ratio at the time of giving the loan is 70%. This basically means that HDFC on an average gives up to 70% of the price of the home as a home loan.

This basically means that the average price of a home in the books of HDFC against which they give a home loan, stands at Rs 40.7 lakh (Rs 28.5 lakh divided by 70%). Let’s round this to Rs 41 lakh, for the sake of convenience.

What does this mean? It means that in order to buy a home, other than taking on a loan of the buyer first needs to make sure that he has savings of around Rs 12.5 lakh (Rs 41 lakh minus Rs 28.5 lakh) to make the downpayment on the home loan. Even if the money is available, he or she needs to make sure that they are in a position to spend that money.

This is not where it ends. In many parts of the country a portion of the real estate transaction is still carried out in black. Money needs to be available for that. Further, a stamp duty needs to be paid to the state government. Then there is the cost of moving into a new house (everything from transport to perhaps new furniture).

Once we factor these things into account, we can conclude that the home loan forms around 50-60% of the overall cost of buying a house. Further, in a time like present, any individual thinking of buying a house will have to weigh the decision against the possibility of losing their job or facing a drop in income in their line of work.

Now let’s consider the average home loan of Rs 28.5 lakh. At 7% interest and a tenure of 20 years, the EMI on this amounts to Rs 22,096. At 9%, the EMI would have worked out to Rs 25,642. Hence, the EMI is Rs 3,546 lower.

So, yes, the EMI is lower. But what will the buyer first look at? The lower EMI or the ability to be able to pay the lower EMI and be able to continue paying it in the days to come. Of course, the buyer will look at his ability to pay the EMI and be able to continue paying it. Also, it needs to be remembered that the interest rate on the home loan is a floating one, and can rise in the years to come.

Hence, this decision will be based on the confidence that the buyer has in his or her own economic future. This is not something that can be measured at an aggregate system level and varies from buyer to buyer. The point being that everything that is important cannot necessarily be measured in numerical terms.

Having said that, the confidence in the economic future will be currently low, with many individuals losing their jobs or seeing their friends, relatives and acquaintances lose jobs. Hence, other than losing a job, there is also the fear of losing the job. There has also been a drop in their income or in some cases small businesses have been shutdown. 

Also, whether it is the best time to buy a house or not, like most things in personal finance, it depends on your finances and more importantly your mental makeup of what you want from life. If you want to settle in life and make your parents and relatives happy, and have the money to do so, then now is as good a time as any to buy a home.

Please keep this in mind at every point of time in life when some expert tells you that this is the best time to do this or the best time to do that.

So, right now if you think you have enough money and enough confidence to keep paying the EMI, and want a home to live in, then please go ahead and buy one. Also, make sure that you have enough savings to pay the EMI for at least six months to a year, even without your main source of income.

To conclude, buying a home is not just about low interest rates. There are several other factors, which people who are in the business of selling real estate, seem to conveniently forget about.

Then there are surveys in which a high proportion of people end up saying they want to buy a home to live in. Of course, they do. But just wanting to do something doesn’t add to demand. I mean, I want to buy a house in central Mumbai, but I also know that ain’t going to happen. My finances don’t allow it.

High Inflation In Times of Covid Will Hit Us Hard

In October 2020, inflation as measured by the consumer price index stood at 7.61%. This is the highest inflation experienced during the period Narendra Modi has been prime minister. The last time inflation or the rate of price rise, was higher than this, was in March 2014, when it had stood at 7.63%.

Let’s look at this issue pointwise.

1) A major reason for high inflation has been high food inflation which was at 11.07% in October. Food forms around 39% of the weight of the consumer price index. Within food, prices of egg, fish and meat, oils and fats, vegetables, pulses and spices, went up by more than 10%.

Interestingly, potato prices are 104.56% higher since last October. This is the highest inflation among all the items which are a part of the consumer price index. One reason offered for this has been a disruption in supply chains due to the spread of covid. But the economy has now more or less totally opened up, meaning disruption can’t continue to be a valid reason. Also, food inflation has been on the higher side since October last year, much before covid broke out.

2) The high inflation is not just because of high food inflation. If we look at core inflation, which leaves out food items and fuel and light items, the inflation is at 5.64%, the highest in thirty months. A major reason for this has been an increase in transport and communication costs which went up by 11.16% in October.

Fares of buses, taxies, auto-rickshaws and rickshaws, have gone up. This is because petrol and diesel are now more expensive than they were last year. The government has increased the excise duty on both the fuels, despite the fact oil prices have fallen internationally. The government’s dependence on fuel taxes has only gone up this year and which is now reflecting in a higher inflation as well. Petrol and diesel used for vehicles come under the transport and communication category of the consumer price index and not the fuel category.

3) Another reason for high core inflation is the higher inflation in the pan, intoxicants and tobacco segment. Interestingly, foreign liquor and beer cost 22.32% and 25.32% more this year than last year. This reflects the state governments increasing the tax on these products in order to shore up revenue.

Toddy prices have also risen 20.19%. Also, the personal care and effects segment saw an inflation of 12.07% in October. The cost of going to a barber/beautician went up by 7.04%. But the major increase here has been in the prices of gold, silver and other ornaments, which went up by 33.77%, 36.66% and 20.52%, respectively. For some reason, they are categorised under personal care and effects.

4) While inflation in the health category has been lower this year than the last year, in October it went up by 5.22%, the highest it has been this year.

5) Within the fuel category, the price of domestic cooking gas went up by 10.16% in October, while non-PDS kerosene was up 8.28%.

6) The high inflation is primarily in the areas of food, parts of fuel, communication and to some extent, health. These are areas which impact the common man. How do higher prices of gold, silver and other ornaments impact the common man? They play a very important role in Indian marriages.

All in all, high inflation has hit India at a time when the country has just gone through its first ever recession after independence. The Indian economy contracted by 23.9% during April to June. It is expected to contract between July and September as well. A recession is defined as a period when the economy contracts for two consecutive quarters.

In fact, as Nikhil Gupta and Yaswi Agarwal of the stock brokerage Motilal Oswal point out in a recent research note: “The rise in the core inflation in India is also the highest among the 21 major economies in the world.” Indeed, this is very worrying.

7) High inflation has hit us at a time when an economic contraction has led to a fall in incomes. Over and above this, people are also saving more to be ready for a rainy day. The total amount of bank savings have increased by Rs 6.32 lakh crore between March 27, around the time the country first started to realise how dangerous covid could be, and October 23. Last year, during a similar period, the deposits had gone up by Rs 3.29 lakh crore. The psychology of a recession is totally in place.

What does this mean?  A good segment of the population has been cutting down on their consumption, particularly non-essential consumption, thanks to lower incomes. A high rate of inflation, if it prevails, will only add to people cutting down on consumption further, making the job of the government and the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) to get the economy going even more difficult.

8) While deposits with banks have soared, the total amount of loans given by banks has actually contracted by a little over Rs 32,000 crore between March 27 and October 23. On the whole, banks haven’t given a single rupee of a new loan, since covid struck.

This has led to the RBI cutting the repo rate or the rate at which it lends to banks. Along with this, the central bank has printed and pumped a lot of money into the financial system, in the hope of driving down interest rates, in order to get both companies and individuals to borrow and spend more money.

That clearly hasn’t happened because of the lack of certainty of economic future. But all the money flooding around in the financial system has led to lower deposit rates making lives of senior citizens difficult, who have no other option but to cut down on their consumption. Even those who use fixed deposits to save for the future are caught in a jam.

To conclude, in this environment if inflation continues to remain stubbornly high, as it has through much of this year, the job of the government and the RBI to get consumption going will become even more difficult. It will also lead to the RBI finding it difficult to continue cutting the repo rate.

This column originally appeared in the Deccan Herald dated November 22, 2020.

Mr Subramanian, Lower Interest Rates Do Not Always Lead to More Bank Loans

Arvind_Subrahmaniyam

“Lower interest rates lead to higher lending,” is something that most economists firmly believe in. The beliefs of Arvind Subramanian, the chief economic adviser to the ministry of finance, are not an exception to this rule.

Hence, not surprisingly in a lecture a few days back he came out all guns blazing against the Reserve Bank of India(RBI) for not cutting the repo rate. Repo rate is the rate at which RBI lends to banks and acts as a sort of a benchmark to the interest rates that banks pay for their deposits and in turn charge on their loan. We say sort of a benchmark here because there are other factors which go into deciding what rate of interest that banks charge on their loans.

Subramanian wants the RBI to cut the repo rate further from its current level of 6.25 per cent. As he said: “Inflation pressures are easing considerably… the inflation outlook is benign because of a number of economic developments… Against this background, most reasonable economists would say that the economy needs all the macroeconomic policy support it can get: instead, both fiscal policy and monetary policy remain tight.

The point here being that current inflation is under control and from the looks of it, future inflation should also be under control. And given this, the RBI must cut its repo rate. The RBI last cut the repo rate in October 2016. And as and when it cuts the rate further, the hope is that the banks will cut their lending rates. Only then will people and industries both borrow and spend more. This will give a flip to the economy. QED.
Subramanian’s point is well taken. Nevertheless, does it make sense? We will deviate a little here before we arrive at the answer.

The RBI Monetary Policy Report released in early April 2017 points out that the decline in the one-year marginal cost of funds based lending rates (MCLRs) of banks between April and October 2016 was just 15 basis points. This when the repo rate was cut by 50 basis points. Hence, even though the RBI cut its repo rate by 50 basis points, the banks cut their lending rates by just 15 basis points, a little under a one-third. One basis point is one hundredth of a percentage.

Post demonetisation “27 public sector banks have reduced their one-year median MCLR in the range of 50 to 105 bps, and 19 private sector banks have done so in the range of 25 to 148 bps.” This when the repo rate has not been cut at all. On an average the one year MCLRs of banks fell by 70 basis points to 8.6 per cent.

What has happened here? A cut in the repo rate barely makes any difference to the cost at which banks have already borrowed money to fund their loans. But demonetisation did. The share of the “low cost current account and savings account (CASA) deposits in aggregate deposits with the SCBs went up to 39.2 per cent (as on March 17, 2017) – an increase of 4.0 percentage points relative to the predemonetisation period”. This is because people deposited the demonetised notes into the banks and this money was credited against their accounts.

This basically meant that banks suddenly had access to cheaper deposits because of demonetisation. And this in turn led them to cut interest rates on their loans, despite no cut in the repo rate. The RBI’s repo rate continued to be at 6.25 per cent during the period.

A cut in lending rates is only one part of the equation. The bigger question has it led to higher borrowings? Are people and businesses borrowing more because lending rates are now lower than they were in the past? And this is where things become interesting.
The total deposits of banks between October 28, 2016 (before demonetisation) and December 30, 2016 (the last date to deposit demonetised currency into banks) went up by 6.41 per cent to Rs 10,568,17 crore. This was a huge jump during a period of two months. This sudden increase in liquidity led to banks cutting their deposit rates and then their lending rates.

Interestingly, the total deposits of banks have continued to remain stable and as of April 30, 2017, were at Rs 10,509,337 crore. This is a minor fall of 0.6 per cent since December 2016.

Between end October 2016 and end April 2017, only around 36 per cent of the incremental deposits raised by banks were loaned out. (We are looking at non-food credit here. The total bank loans that remain after we adjust for the loans that have been given to the Food Corporation of India and other state procurement agencies for the procurement of rice and wheat produced by farmers).

This means for every new deposit worth Rs 100, the bank loaned out just Rs 36, despite a cut in interest rates.

If we were to look the same ratio between end October 2015 and end April 2016, it projects a totally different picture. 116 per cent of the incremental deposits during the period were lent out. This means for every new deposit worth Rs 100, the bank loaned out Rs 116.  This means that deposits raised before the start of this period were also lent out.

Hence, a greater amount of lending happened at higher interest rates between October 2015 and April 2016. And this goes totally against Subramanian’s idea of the RBI needing to cut the repo rate. It also goes against the idea of banks lending more at lower interest rates.

Given this, low interest rates are only a part of the story. If that is not leading to higher lending, it doesn’t help in anyway. Lending isn’t happening due to various reasons, which we keep discussing. Demonetisation has only added to this issue.

Also, a fall in interest rates hurts those who depend on a regular income from fixed deposits to meet their expenditure. It also hurts those who are saving for their long-term goals. In both the cases, expenditure has to be cut down. In one case because enough regular income is not being generated and in another case in order to be able to save more to reach the investment goal. And this cut in spending hurts the overall economy. Interest rates are also about the saver and depositor.

We are yet to see a professional economist talk from this angle. To them it is always a case of garbage in garbage out i.e. lower interest rates lead to increased lending. This is simply because most professional economists these days get trained in the United States where the system is totally different and lower interest rates do lead to a higher borrowing by businesses and people.

But that doesn’t necessarily work in India. It is a totally different proposition here.

The column originally appeared in Equitymaster on May 15, 2017.