Gabbar’s motto would’ve been better than Lata’s song, Mr Das

Shaktikanta Das, the governor of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), projected optimism in the latest monetary policy by reminding us of the great Lata Mangeshkar song “aaj phir jeene ki tamanna hai (Now, again, I desire to live),” from the movie Guide.

The eternal message of optimism needed to be projected in order to defend the monetary policy committee’s decision to not raise the repo rate or the interest rate at which the RBI lends to banks. The repo rate has some impact on the interest rates at which banks carry out their lending. When a central bank raises the repo rate it’s essentially signalling that it is getting worried about inflation or the rate of price rise.

The RBI under Das started cutting the repo rate in February 2019, when it was at 6.5%. By May 2020, it was cut to 4%, which is where it has stayed since. So, the monetary policy has been in what economists like to call accommodative for close to two years. Along with cutting the repo rate, RBI also printed money and flooded it into the financial system by buying bonds.

The idea, in the aftermath of the covid pandemic, understandably, was to drive down interest rates, with the hope that people would borrow and spend more, and industries would borrow and expand, and the government would be able to borrow at low interest rates.

But the times are changing now, with inflation becoming a global phenomenon. As per the February 5th-11th issue of The Economist global inflation now stands at 6%. Retail inflation in the United States in January stood at 7.5%, the highest since February 1982. In December, the retail inflation in the Euro Area was at 5%, the highest it has ever been since data started to be collected in January 1997.

Not surprisingly, central banks all across the world have been raising interest rates. The Bank of England has already raised interest rates twice. The Federal Reserve of the United States will have to soon start raising rates to rein in the four-decade high retail inflation.

Retail inflation in India in December 2021 was at 5.6%, lower than 6% level above which RBI starts to get uncomfortable. Interestingly, the RBI believes that inflation during the next financial year will be at 4.5%. This, given the evidence on offer and the fact that we live in a highly globalized world, seems a tad unlikely.

Oil prices continue to remain high with the price of Brent crude being at $90 per barrel. Also, the supply chain problems, which had cropped all across the world due to the spread of the covid pandemic, haven’t gone away. Then there is the joker in the pack, on which, as always, a lot depends in the Indian case: a normal monsoon. As Dipanwita Mazumdar, an economist at the Bank of Baroda, puts it: “Another upside risk to inflation is the possibility of a below normal monsoon. Statistically, with six successive monsoons, there could be a sub-optimal one this year.”

Further, we have close to 6% retail inflation despite consumer demand at an aggregate level continuing to remain muted. Due to this, companies have been unable to pass on the increase in the cost of their inputs to the end consumers. This can be gauged from the fact that from April to December 2021, the wholesale inflation was at 12.5%, whereas retail inflation was at 5.2%. As Das put it in his statement: “The transmission of input cost pressures to selling prices remains muted in view of the continuing slack in demand”.

The lack of consumer demand has held retail inflation down. Nonetheless, companies have started raising prices as consumer demand has started to pick up. As the RBI’s monetary policy statement put it: “The pick-up in… bank credit, supportive monetary and liquidity conditions, sustained buoyancy in merchandise exports… and stable business outlook augur well for aggregate demand.”

This, in an environment of continued high oil prices, supply chain constraints and more expensive imports, implies higher retail inflation in the months to come, which means the RBI should have started raising the repo rate by now. But it hasn’t.

So, why has the RBI maintained a status quo? It’s the debt manager of the government. The government’s gross borrowing stood at Rs 12.6 lakh crore in 2020-21. It will end up borrowing Rs 10.5 lakh crore in 2021-22, with plans of borrowing Rs 15 lakh crore in 2022-23. Given this, the RBI has to help the government to borrow at low interest rates.

To cut a long story short, the RBI is not bothered about retail inflation, controlling which is its primary mandate. It’s more interested in ensuring that the government is able to borrow at low interest rates.

Finally, Das just quoted one line from the beautiful Lata song written by Shailendra and composed by SD Burman. The next line of the song goes like this: “aaj phir marne ka iraada hai ((Now, again, I desire to die)).” The translation doesn’t do justice to Shailendra’s writing which metaphorically captures the tormented state of mind of a married woman who has suddenly found love in another man, at once feeling both exhilaration and guilt and dejection.

The binaries in economics are never as strong as life and death, nonetheless, they do exist. It’s just that RBI under Das likes to be an optimistic cheerleader rather than an institution which should realistically assess the state of the Indian economy.

Hence, as far as projecting eternal optimism goes, Das should have been quoting the Gabbar Singh dialogue from Sholay written by Salim-Javed: “Jo darr gaya samjho mar gaya (the one who is afraid is dead),” and not Shailendra, SD Burman and Lata’s song.

(A slightly different version of this column appeared in the Deccan Herald on February 13, 2022.)

Privatization by Malign Neglect: Nationalized Banks Gave Out Just 6% of Banking Loans in 2020-21

One story that I have closely tracked over the years is the privatization of the Indian banking sector, despite the government continuing to own a majority stake in public sector banks (PSBs). I recently wrote a piece in the Mint newspaper regarding the same.

The moral of the story is that the PSBs have continued to lose market share to the private banks, over the years. This is true of both deposits as well as loans.

In the last decade and a half, when it comes to loans, the share of PSBs in the overall lending carried out by scheduled commercial banks in India  peaked at 75.1% in March 2010. As of March 2021, it had fallen to 56.5%.

When it comes to deposits, during the same period, the share of PSBs in the total deposits raised by scheduled commercial banks peaked at 74.8% in March 2012. As of March 2021, it had fallen to 61.3%. Meanwhile, the private banks had gained share both in loans as well as deposits. (For complete details read the Mint story mentioned earlier).

One feedback on the Mint story was to check for how well PSBs other than the State Bank of India (SBI), the largest PSB and the largest bank in India, have been doing. In this piece, I attempt to do that. Data for this piece has been drawn from the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE) and several investor presentations of SBI. The data takes into account the merger of SBI with its five associate banks as of April 1, 2017.

Let’s take a look at the findings point wise.

1)  Let’s start with the share of different kinds of banks in the overall banking loan pie.

Source: Author calculations on data from the
Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy
and the investor presentations of SBI.

In the last 15 years, the share of SBI in the overall banking loan pie has been more or less constant (look at the blue curve, it seems as straight as a line). It was at 23.1% as of March 2006 and it stood at 22.7% as of March 2021. Clearly, SBI has managed to hold on to its market share in face of tough competition from private banks.

But the same cannot be said of the other PSBs, which are popularly referred to as nationalized banks, given that they were private banks earlier and were nationalized first in 1969 (14 banks) and later in 1980 (six banks).

The share of these banks in the lending pie has fallen from 47.9% in March 2006 to 33.8% in March 2021.

In fact, the fall started from March 2015 on, when the share of the nationalized banks in overall lending had stood at 50.1%. This is when the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) rightly started forcing these banks to recognise their bad loans as bad loans, something they had been avoiding doing since 2011, when the bad loans first started to accumulate. Bad loans are largely loans which haven’t been repaid for a period of 90 days or more.

Not surprisingly, the share of private banks in the banking loan pie has been going up. It is up from 20% to 35.5% in the last 15 years, though a bulk of the gain has come from March 2015 onwards, when the share was at 20.8%. Clearly, the private banks have gained market share at the cost of nationalized banks. As stated earlier, SBI has managed to maintain its market share.

2) Now let’s take a look at the deposit share of different kinds of banks.

Source: Author calculations on data from
the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy
and the investor presentations of SBI.

The first thing that comes out clearly is that the shape of the curves in this chart are like the earlier chart, telling us that conclusions are likely to be similar.

When it comes to overall banking deposits, the share of SBI has been more or less constant over the last 15 years. It has moved up a little from 23.3% to 23.8%, with very little volatility in between.

For nationalized banks, it has fallen from 48.5% to 37.4%, with a bulk of the fall coming post March 2015, when it had stood at 51%.

The fall in market share of nationalized banks has been captured by private banks, with their share moving up from 19.4% to 29.9% in the last 15 years. Again, a bulk of this gain has come post March 2015, when their market share was at 19.7%. Clearly, as nationalized banks have been trying to put their house back in order, private banks have moved in for the kill and captured market share.

The two charts clearly tell us that the banking scenario in India has been changing post March 2015, but they don’t show us the gravity of the situation.

To do that we need to look at the incremental loans given out by the banks each year and the incremental deposits raised by them during the same year. Up until now we were looking at the overall loans given out by banks and the overall deposits raised by them, at any given point of time.  

3) Let’s take a look at the share that different kinds of banks have had in incremental loans given out every year. Incremental loans are obtained in the following way. The outstanding bank loans of SBI stood at Rs 25 lakh crore as of March 2021. They had stood at around Rs 23.7 lakh crore as of March 2020.

The incremental loans given between March 2020 and March 2021, stood at Rs 1.3 lakh crore. This is how the calculation is carried out for different banks across different years. The number is then divided by the incremental loans given out by scheduled commercial banks, and the market share of different kind of banks is obtained.

In 2020-21, the total incremental loans given by the banks stood at Rs 5.2 lakh crore. Of this, SBI had given out around Rs 1.3 lakh crore and hence, it had a market share of around one-fourth, when it came to incremental loans given by banks.

Source: Author calculations on data from the
Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy
and the investor presentations of SBI.

The above chart tells us is that post March 2015, a bulk of incremental lending has been carried out by private banks. In 2014-15, the private banks carried out by 35.6% of incremental lending. This touched a peak of 79.5% in 2015-16 and their share was at 58.9% in 2020-21, the last financial year.

SBI’s share in incremental lending hasn’t moved around much and it stood at 24.4% in 2020-21.

The real story lies with the nationalized banks. Their share of incremental lending has collapsed from a little over half of the incremental lending in 2013-14 to just 0.2% in 2019-20. In 2020-21, it was slightly better at 6.3%.

These banks have barely carried out any lending in the last five years, with their share being limited to 6.1% of the incremental loans that have been given during the period. SBI’s share stands at 25.3% and that of private banks at 59.9%.

4) Now let’s look at how the share of incremental deposits of different kinds of banks over the years.

Source: Author calculations on data from the
Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy
and the investor presentations of SBI.

This is perhaps the most noisy of all the charts up until now. But even here it is clear that the share of nationalized banks in incremental deposits has come down over the years. It was at 50.9% in 2013-14. In 2017-18, the deposits of nationalized banks saw a contraction of 8.5%, meaning that the total deposits they had went down between March 2017 and March 2018. In 2020-21, their share of incremental deposits stood at 26.3%.

The chart also tells us that in the last six years, the private banks have raised more deposits during each financial year, than SBI and nationalized banks have done on their own.

5) In the following chart, the incremental loan-deposit ratio of banks has been calculated. This is done by taking the incremental loans given by banks during a particular year and dividing it by the incremental deposits raised during the year.

Source: Author calculations on data from the
Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy
and the investor presentations of SBI.

The curve for non SBI PSBs is broken because in 2017-18,
the banks saw a deposit contraction,
and hence, the incremental loan deposit ratio
of that year cannot be calculated.

The incremental loan deposit ratio of nationalized banks collapsed to 0.5% in 2019-20 and 7.4% in 2020-21. What this means is that while these banks continue to raise deposits, they have barely given out any loans over the last two years. In 2019-20, for every Rs 100 rupees they raised as a deposit they gave out 50 paisa as a loan (Yes, you read that right!). In 2020-21, for every Rs 100, they raised as a deposit they gave out Rs 7.4 as a loan.

One reason for this lies in the fact that many of these banks were rightly placed under a prompt corrective action (PCA) framework post 2017 to allow them to handle their bad loan issues.

This placed limits on their ability to lend and borrow. Viral Acharya, who was a deputy governor of the RBI at that point of time, did some plain-speaking in a speech where he explained the true objective of the PCA framework:

“Such action should entail no further growth in deposit base and lending for the worst-capitalized banks. This will ensure a gradual “runoff” of such banks, and encourage deposit migration away from the weakest PSBs to healthier PSBs and private sector banks.”

The idea behind the PCA framework was to drive new business away from the weak banks, give them time to heal and recover, and at the same time ensure they don’t make newer mistakes and in the process minimize the further accumulation of bad loans. This came at the cost of the banks having to go slow on lending.

As I keep saying there is no free lunch in economics. All this happened because these banks did not recognise their bad loans as bad loans between 2011 and 2014, and only did so when they were forced by the RBI mid 2015 onwards.

There is a lesson that we need to learn here. The bad loans of banks will start accumulating again as the post covid stress will lead to and is leading to loan defaults. It is important that banks do not indulge in the same hanky-panky that they did post 2011 and recognise their bad loans as bad loans, as soon as possible.

What banks did between 2011 and 2014, when it comes to bad loans, has already cost the Indian banking sector a close to a decade. The same mistake shouldn’t be made all over again.

Now with many of the nationalized banks out of the PCA framework, their deposit franchises remain intact, nonetheless, they don’t seem to be in the mood to lend or prospective borrowers don’t seem to be in the mood to borrow from these banks, and perhaps find borrowing from private banks, easier and faster.

Of course, one needs to keep in mind the fact that 2020-21 was a pandemic year, and the overall lending remained subdued.

Meanwhile, the private banks keep gaining market share at the cost of the nationalized banks. This means that by the time the government gets around to privatizing some of these banks, if at all it does, their business models are likely to have completely broken down. They will have deposit bases without adequate lending activity. 

The nation shall witness what Ruchir Sharma of Morgan Stanley calls privatization by malign neglect, play out all over again, like it had in the airline sector and the telecom sector, before this.

 

How RBI Generated a ₹ 99,122 Crore Surplus for the Government

On May 21, the central board of directors of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) approved the transfer of Rs 99,122 crore as surplus to the central government for the accounting period of nine months ending March 31, 2021 (July 2020-March 2021). 

This transfer to the government has raised a few issues. Let’s look at them point wise. But before we do that, I want to make a disclaimer here. This is a complicated topic and to make sure that I am able to explain it in simple English, I have left out a few details. At the cost of repetition, the idea is to explain the issues at hand, than get all the details right. So, to everyone who understands this inside out, apologies in advance.

Here we go. 

1) The RBI’s accounting year was from July to June, different from the April to March period that the central government follows. From 2021-22 onwards, the accounting year of the RBI will be the same as that of the government. Given this, the last accounting year of the RBI was for the period of nine months from July 2020 to March 2021, as it moved to the government’s accounting year.

Despite this shortening in the accounting year, the RBI surplus to the government has jumped big time. The surplus transferred to the government from July 2019 to June 2020, had stood at Rs 57,128 crore, for a period of full 12 months. Clearly, there has been a huge jump in the surplus transferred to the government, once we consider the fact that the last accounting year of the RBI was just nine months long.

2) The annual budget of the central government presented by the finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman on February 1, had assumed that the central government would earn Rs 53,511 crore as way of dividend/surplus from the RBI, the nationalised banks and the financial institutions (read the Life Insurance Corporation of India). A few months later, the surplus transferred just by RBI is much more than Rs 53,511 crore. So what gives?

3) Let’s first try and understand how the RBI managed to generate such a huge surplus, which was unexpected (or at least not made public) up until the budget was presented earlier this year. From July 2020 to March 2021, the RBI gross sold a total of $85.2 billion of its foreign exchange.

An accounting change made in 2019, thanks to the Bimal Jalan Committee report, now allows the RBI to pass a part of the profit made from selling foreign exchange, to the government as a surplus. The earlier system was different (for the sake of simplicity we won’t go there).

There is a certain weighted average price at which RBI has bought these dollars over the years. The RBI doesn’t reveal this detail. As per Ananth Narayan, Senior India Analyst at the Observatory Group, this weighted average stood at Rs 55.70, from July 2019 to June 2020.

It would be fair to say the weighted average would be a little higher in the last accounting year, more towards Rs 58-60 to a dollar. The RBI would have sold these dollars, from July 2020 to March 2021, at Rs 72-75 to a dollar, and thus made a profit of around Rs 15 for every dollar sold.

A part of this profit has been passed on to the central government as a surplus. So far so good.

4) While at the aggregate level, everything looks fine, if we start to look at the detailed data, this doesn’t pass the basic smell test. Take a look at the following graph, which basically plots the total gross dollars sold by the RBI every month from July 2020 to March 2021.


Source: Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy. 

The above chart makes for a very interesting reading. Close to 60% of the dollars sold during  the accounting year were sold in the last two months ($50.5 billion of the total $85.2 billion). More than 77% of the dollars sold during the year were sold in the last three months ($65.9 billion of the total $85.2 billion). 

What does this tell us? It tells us that the RBI sold a lot of dollars after the finance minister had presented the budget. And a good chunk of the surplus given to the government was probably thus generated. If I was a gossip columnist, I would have definitely speculated, whether one of the secretaries in the FinMin dialled RBI for more money, around the time the budget was presented.

5) As mentioned earlier, the facts stated above don’t pass the basic smell test. The RBI at various points of time needs to sell dollars in order to manage the dollar rupee exchange rate. While the RBI sold $65.9 billion from January to March, it also bought $61.8 billion during the same period. On the whole, this wouldn’t have made much of a difference in moving the foreign exchange market in a particular direction, when it comes to dollar rupee exchange rate.

Take a look at the following chart, which plots the dollar rupee exchange rate from January 2021 to March 2021.


Source: Yahoo Finance.

As can be seen from the above chart, the dollar rupee exchange rate moved within a narrow  range of Rs 72.4-73.6, for the first three months of 2021.

So what does this really mean? The RBI sold lots of dollars after the finance minister’s budget speech, not because that was what was required in the foreign exchange market, but in order to generate an accounting surplus for a cash-starved government. If I were to put it in very simple terms, the RBI led by Shaktikanta Das, resorted to jugaad.

6) The way things stand the RBI is not allowed to directly finance the expenditure by printing money and handing it over to the government to spend. Hence, over the last couple of years, it has been resorting to different ways to do so. Selling and buying dollars in order to generate an accounting profit is one such way. 

If I were to be slightly flippant here I would ask a rhetorical question – Is RBI a central bank or is it a government sponsored hedge fund?

Another way of financing the government has been printing money and buying existing government bonds from banks and other financial institutions.

While this move does not hand over money to the government directly, it does ensure that the supply of money in the financial system goes up, and the newly created money can be used by banks and financial institutions to buy fresh government bonds. Hence, this is indirect monetisaton of the government’s fiscal deficit or the difference between what it earns and what it spends.

To conclude, while nothing can stop a central bank from printing money, the tactic of selling dollars in order to generate a profit depends on how much the rupee depreciates against the dollar. While the weighted average cost of the dollars that the RBI currently has, is less than Rs 60 to a dollar, it will only rise in the years to come.

Hence, for enough profit to be generated through this route, the rupee needs to depreciate against the dollar. But that’s where atma nirbharta will come in and limit the RBI’s hand. Strong nations have strong currencies, at least that’s the idea in the heads of the politicians who run the current government.

Matthew Effect of Covid Pandemic: Rich Got Richer and Poor Got Poorer

In 1968, sociologists Robert K Merton and Harriet Zuckerman, came up with the concept of the Matthew Effect of accumulated advantage. The term takes its name from the Gospel of Matthew, which points out: “For to everyone who has will more be given, and he will have abundance; but from him who has not, even what he has will be taken away.”

In simpler terms, the Matthew Effect of accumulated advantage is stated as the rich become richer and the poor get poorer. This is precisely how things have played out over the last one year, as the covid pandemic has spread through India and large parts of the world.

Let’s take a look at the different ways in which this has happened.

1) Central banks in the rich world have printed a massive amount of money post covid. Just the Federal Reserve of the United States has printed more than $3.5 trillion between end February 2020 and now. Other big central banks like the Bank of England, the Bank of Japan and European Central Bank have also done the same.

This has been done in order to drive down interest rates. The hope is that at lower interest rates people will borrow and spend money, and businesses will borrow and expand. This will help the economy revive. Many rich countries have put money directly in the bank accounts of people, encouraging them to spend.

Some of this money has found its way into stock markets all around the world, including India, driving stock prices way beyond what the earnings of companies justify. The foreign institutional investors invested a whopping $37.03 billion in Indian stocks in 2020-21, the highest they have ever invested. The next best being $25.83 billion in 2012-13.

This sent stock prices soaring with the Sensex, India’s most famous stock market index, gaining 68% in 2020-21. In fact, the market capitalisation of all BSE listed stocks (not just the 30 Sensex stocks) went up by Rs 90.82 lakh crore in 2020-21.

The poor don’t buy stocks, the rich do. The rally in the stock market has benefitted them tremendously, making them richer. In 2019-20, investment in shares and debentures (which includes mutual funds), despite all the hype, formed a minuscule 3.39% of the overall Indian household financial savings. In 2020-21, this would have definitely gone up, but given its low base it would have still formed a very small part of the overall financial savings of Indian households.

As per the 10th Edition of Hurun Global Rich List 2021, India added 55 new dollar billionaires in 2020, with the total number of billionaires in the country going up to 177, a 45% jump in the number of billionaires in comparison to 2019. If one looks at the list of the richest Indian billionaires, most of their wealth is in the stock market. And with stock markets rallying big time in 2020-21, their wealth has gone up.

2) Like the central banks of the rich world, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) also joined the money printing party and printed Rs 3.6 lakh crore between the beginning of March 2020 and the end of March 2021. This has primarily been done in order to drive down interest rates and help the government borrow at lower interest rates. The central government borrowed Rs 12.8 lakh crore last year and is expected to borrow Rs 12.06 lakh crore in 2021-22.

While money printing helps the central government borrow at lower rates, it hurts the middle class and the poor, who invest in fixed deposits and other forms of fixed income investments to save money. It needs to be remembered that most Indians save by investing in fixed deposits, small savings schemes, provident and pension funds and life insurance. In 2019-20, 84.24% of the household financial savings were made in these financial instruments. Low interest rates largely mean lower returns from these investments. 

In the last two years, the average interest rate on bank term deposits (fixed deposits, recurring deposits, etc.) of more than one year has come down dramatically. It was at 7.5% in March-April 2019. In March 2021, it stands at 5.5%. A bulk of this fall has happened from the beginning of 2020. Recently, the government had majorly cut the interest rates on small savings schemes for the period April to June. Nevertheless, it reversed the decision overnight, probably because of the assembly elections that were still on. It is now expected that the government will cut the interest rate on small savings schemes for the period July to September. 

Lower interest rates, hurt the middle class and the poor especially when the rate of inflation is as high as the interest rates on offer.

The money printing by the RBI to drive down interest rates is likely to continue in the months to come. The Indian central bank is expected to print Rs 1 lakh crore during April to June . This means that bank interest rates will continue to remain low, continuing to hurt the poor and the middle class.

3) While the Indian economy is expected to contract during 2020-21, data from Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE) shows that the listed corporates (both financial and non-financial) have made their highest profits ever during the period July to September 2020 and October to December 2020.

As Mahesh Vyas of the Centre for Monitoring of Indian Economy pointed out in a recent piece: “In the December 2020 quarter, the net profit of listed companies exceeded…the record profits of September 2020.” The net profit during the quarters stood at Rs 1.51 lakh crore and Rs 1.53 lakh crore, respectively. These were the highest quarterly profits ever made by listed Indian corporates. 

This means that owners of these businesses have grown richer and so has the top management of these companies given that they own employee stock option plans and benefit from the dividends paid by the companies every year.  

But how did listed Indian corporates make their highest profits ever, while the economy was contracting? The net sales of the non-financial companies, which are a bulk of the listed corporates, fell by 10.4% in the quarter ending September and by 0.9% in the quarter ending December, in comparison to a year earlier, but the companies still made record profits. This happened primarily because the companies were able to drive down their operating expenses.

In the quarter ending March 2020, the operating expenses or the cost of running a business, made up 91.1% of their sales. In the quarters ending September 2020 and December 2020, the operating expenses amounted to 81.4% and 82.8% of the sales, respectively.

In simple English, the companies slashed employee expenses and they renegotiated their contracts with their suppliers and contractors, to drive down their costs. The larger businesses benefitted in the process  at the cost of the smaller ones.

Of course, if a small company gets paid a lower amount of money from a large company, it also has to renegotiate the money it is paying to its employees and suppliers. This also leads to job losses as smaller companies then need to fire employees in order to cut costs and continue to stay viable.

This has played out for the last one year and continues to play out now as well, with the second wave of covid spreading. It is not easy to put a number to this phenomenon, but that does not mean that this is not happening or is not important.

4) Data from the Centre of Monitoring Indian Economy shows that the size of the labour force between January 2020 and March 2021, has shrunk by 1.66 crore. This when the size of the working age population or the population greater than 15 years of age has increased by 2.88 crore during the same period.

What this means is that many individuals who can’t find jobs, have stopped looking and simply dropped out of the workforce. To be counted as a part of a labour force, an individual needs to be either employed or unemployed and be looking for a job.

The sheer size of numbers here tells us that it is the poor who are dropping out of the workforce, giving up on job search. Also as I have discussed in the past, women have faced the brunt of India’s unemployment problem.

5) The rise of the internet and the availability of cheap broadband has ensured that the need to have all hands on the deck is no longer there.

Of course, this does not mean that everyone can work from home. The working class has faced the brunt of the crisis. As Scott Galloway writes in Post Corona – From Crisis to Opportunity: “Most working-class people… can’t do their jobs at home, since they are tied to the store, warehouse, factory, or other place of work.”

People working in factories, hotels, bank branches, hospitals, real estate projects, mom and pop shops, emergency services, delivery services, etc., or driving cabs for that matter, need to turn up at their places of work and job sites every day.

Also, extended working from home, will end up having other major economic consequences. Other than permanent employees, every office has office maintenance jobs which are not on the rolls of the company. Most large offices have canteens run by a contractor. Some companies offer pick up and drop facilities to their employees.

This is how services companies create low-skilled and semi-skilled jobs. Around many large office complexes there are tapris (very small shops) selling tea, coffee and food. Further, the app cab drivers and normal taxi drivers, have already seen their business go down.

Working from home has already hit people in these professions hard. Again, while it is not easy to put a number to this phenomenon, that does not mean that this is not happening or is not important.

6) Given these factors, it is hardly surprising that many people have dropped out of the middle class. A Pew Research centre analysis found that “the middle class in India is estimated to have shrunk by 32 million in 2020 as a consequence of the downturn, compared with the number it may have reached absent the pandemic.”

This accounted for three-fifths of the global retreat in the number of people in the global middle class (defined as people with incomes of $10.01-$20 a day).

While the number of people dropping out of the middle class is high, the increase in the number of poor is shocking beyond belief. Their number is “estimated to have increased by 75 million because of the COVID-19 recession.” This also accounts for around three-fifths of the global increase in poverty.  

In fact, this is something that Nobel Prize winning economist Angus Deaton confirms in a recent research paper, where he points out:

“China did better than almost all other countries, while India did worse. China’s 1.4 billion people experienced few deaths and growth in per capita income, which took them closer to the richer countries of the world and decreased (weighted) global inequality. India’s 1.4 billion people experienced many more deaths, as well as a large drop in income, which increased (weighted) global inequality.”

Of course, with the second wave of covid starting, all this is likely to continue. One point that we need to consider here is the ability of individuals to make a living in the years to come. School and college students are being taught digitally since the last one year. It needs to be considered here that not every student has access to a computer. Further, even if there is access to a computer, it might have to be shared among multiple siblings. Then there is the question of internet speed, electricity and so on.

The quality of education being delivered digitally will impact the earning capacity of many middle class and poor students, in the years to come.

In short, like the disease itself, the negative economic effects of covid, especially among the poor and the middle class, will continue to be felt in the years to come. 

RBI to Print Rs 1 Lakh Crore to Keep Government Happy

After Lehman Brothers, the fourth largest investment bank on Wall Street went bust in September 2008, the Federal Reserve of the United States, the American central bank, came up with three rounds of large-scale asset purchases (LSAP). The LSAP was popularly referred to as quantitative easing or QE.

Yesterday, Shaktikanta Das, the governor of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) announced a similar sounding GSAP or G-sec acquisition programme, where G-sec stands for government securities. India now has its own planned QE. (At the risk of deviation, it’s not just the Indian film industry which copies the Americans, our central bank also does.)

The government of India issues financial securities known as government securities or government bonds, in order to finance its fiscal deficit or the difference between what it earns and what it spends. Banks, insurance companies, non-banking finance companies, mutual funds and other financial institutions, buy these securities. Some are mandated to do so, others do it out of their own free will. 

What does GSAP entail? Like was the case with the Federal Reserve and the LSAP, the RBI will print money and buy government securities. For the first quarter of 2021-22 (April to June), the RBI has committed to buying government securities worth Rs 1 lakh crore. The first purchase under GSAP of Rs 25,000 crore will happen on April 15, later this month.

Why is this being done? Among other things, the RBI is also the debt manager for the central government. It manages government’s borrowing programme. After borrowing Rs 12.8 lakh crore in 2020-21, the government is expected to borrow another Rs 12.05 lakh crore in 2021-22. Due to the covid-pandemic and a general slowdown in tax revenues over the years, the government has had to borrow more in order to finance its expenditure and the fiscal deficit.

This information of the government having to borrow more than Rs 12 lakh crore again in 2021-22, came to light when the annual budget of the central government was presented on February 1. Due to this higher borrowing, the bond market immediately wanted a higher return from government securities.

The return (or yield to maturity as it is more popularly know) on 10-year government securities as of January 29, had stood at 5.95%. By February 22, the return had jumped to 6.2% or gone up by 25 basis points, in a matter of a few weeks. One basis point is one hundredth of a percentage. 

The yield to maturity on a security is the annual return an investor can expect when he buys a security at a particular price, on a particular day and holds on to it till its maturity.

As the latest monetary policy report of the RBI released yesterday points out: “Yields spiked following the announcement of government borrowings of  Rs12.05 lakh crore for 2021-22 and additional borrowing of Rs 80,000 crore for 2020-21.”

In May 2020, the government had announced that it would borrow a total of Rs 12 lakh crore in 2020-21. When the budget was presented, the government said that it would end up borrowing Rs 12.8 lakh crore or Rs 80,000 crore more. 

At any given point of time, the financial system can only lend a given amount of money. When the demand for money goes up, it is but natural that the return expected by the lenders will also go up. This led to the bond market demanding a higher rate of return on government securities, pushing up the yields or returns on government securities.

How did this become a bother for the government? When the returns on existing government securities go up, the RBI has to offer higher rates of interest on the fresh financial securities that it plans to issue on behalf of the government to fund the fiscal deficit. This pushes up the interest bill of the government, which the government is trying to minimise. 

Government securities are deemed to be the safest form of lending. Once returns on these securities go up, the interest rates in general across the economy tend to go up, which is not something that the RBI wants at this point of time. The hope is that lower interest rates will help the economy revive faster.

As the debt manager of the government, it’s the RBI’s job to offer the best possible deal to its main client. Hence, post the budget, the RBI got into the job quickly and to drive down returns on government securities launched an open market operation (OMO). As the monetary policy report points out: “Yields subsequently eased somewhat on the back of… the OMO purchases for an enhanced amount of Rs 20,000 crore on February 10, 2021.”

In an OMO, the RBI prints money and buys government securities from those institutions who are willing to sell them. The idea here is to pump more money into the financial system and in the process ensure that yields or returns on government securities go down.

With the GSAP, the RBI has just taken this idea forward. While the GSAP is not very different from the OMOs that the RBI carries out, it is more of an upfront commitment and clear communication from the RBI that it will do whatever it takes to ensure that yields on government securities don’t go up. Like between April and June, the RBI plans to print and pump Rs 1 lakh crore into the financial system. 

Let me make a slight deviation here. In this case, the RBI is also indirectly financing the government’s fiscal deficit. As the debt manager for the government, the RBI sells fresh securities to raise money in order to help the government finance its fiscal deficit.

These securities are bought by various financial institutions. When they do this, they have handed over money to the RBI, which credits the government’s account with it. In the process, the financial institutions as a whole have that much lesser money to lend for the long-term.

By printing money and pumping it into the financial system, the RBI ensures that the money that financial institutions have available for lending for the long-term, doesn’t really go down or doesn’t go down as much,

Hence, in that sense, the RBI is actually indirectly financing the government borrowing. (It’s just buying older bonds and not newer ones directly). A reading of business press tells me that the bond market expects more money printing by the RBI during the course of the year. One particular estimate going around is that of more than Rs 3 lakh crore. In that sense, even if the RBI prints Rs 3 lakh crore, it will indirectly finance around a fourth of the government borrowing given that it is scheduled to borrow Rs 12.05 lakh crore in 2021-22. 

Now getting back to the topic. Like in any OMO, while carrying out a GSAP operation, the RBI will print money and buy government securities. In the process, it will put money into the financial system. This will ensure that returns on government securities don’t go up. In the process, the government will end up borrowing at lower rates.

This is how the RBI plans to keeps its main customer happy. It needs to be mentioned here that with the second wave of covid spreading across the country, chances are economic recovery will take a backseat and the government will have trouble raising tax revenues like it did in 2020-21, the last financial year.

This might lead to increased borrowing on the government front. Increased borrowing without the RBI interfering will definitely lead to the bond market demanding higher returns from government securities. With the GSAP, the hope is that yields or returns on government securities will continue to remain low.

It is worth remembering that Shaktikanta Das’ three year term as the RBI Governor comes to an end later this year. Hence, at least until then, it makes sense for Das to keep Delhi happy.

Of course, the money printing leading to lower return on government securities, will also ensure that the interest you, dear reader, earn on your fixed deposits, will continue to remain low, and the real rate of interest after adjusting for the prevailing inflation, will largely be in negative territory. 

As mentioned earlier, lending to the government is deemed to be the safest form of lending. And if that lending can be carried out at low rates, the other rates will also remain low. This is the cost of the RBI trying to help the government, the corporates and the individual borrowers. It comes at the cost of savers. This is interest that the savers would have otherwise earned.

It is as if the RBI is telling the savers, don’t have your money lying around in deposits. Chase a higher return. Buy stocks. Buy bitcoin. 

If the RBI had let the interest rates find their own level, with the government borrowing more, the interest rates would have gone up and helped the savers earn a higher return on their deposits. This would have also encouraged consumption, especially among those individuals whose expenditure depends on interest income. The argument offered by economists over and over again is that lower interest rates lead to higher borrowing and faster economic recovery.

Let’s take a look at this in the case of bank lending to industry. As of February 2021, the total bank lending to industry stood Rs 27.86 lakh crore. As of February 2016, five years back, the total bank lending to industry had stood at Rs 27.45 lakh crore.

Over a period of five years, the net bank lending to industry has gone up by a minuscule Rs 40,731 crore or just 1.5%. Meanwhile, the interest rate on fresh rupee loans given by banks during the same period has fallen from 10.54% to 8.19%, a fall of 235 basis points.

So much for corporates borrowing more at lower interest rates. This is their revealed preference; the actions that they are taking and not the bullshit that they keep mouthing on TV and in the business media. Currently, the Indian corporate simply isn’t confident enough about the country’s economic future and that’s the reason for not borrowing and expanding, irrespective of the public posturing. 

Anyway, the point is not that higher interest rates are required. But the point is that if the RBI did not intervene like it has been doing, by printing money and buying bonds, slightly higher interest rates which would put the real interest rate in positive territory, would have been the order of the day. And that would have been better than the prevailing situation. A little better for the savers about whom neither the RBI nor the government seems to be bothered about.

But then as I said earlier, the government is the RBI’s main customer these days. And that’s the long and the short of it.