LIBOR to be phased out by 2021!
By Abin Daya The LIBOR is dead! Well, not quite. But in the next 4 years, it could be. The The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) announced this week that it intended to phase out the LIBOR by 2021. Post that, banks would no longer be compelled to provide interest quotes to the Inter-Continental Exchange, and in the absence of these, the benchmark would die a natural death. What comes after that? We don’t know yet. But the first item this week is something closer home – India’s foreign trade numbers for the month of June. Apart from what is included in the update, I also tried to explore if there was some sort of correlation between industrial production growth and export performance. ...
Russia, Saudi Arabia agree to extend oil output cuts for another 9 months
The Dollar Business Bureau Russia and Saudi Arabia agreed on Monday to extend oil output cuts for another nine months till March 2018, to address the global crude glut and the increase in oil prices. The timing of the announcement sends a clear signal to other OPEC member countries before their next meeting on May 25, to follow suit. The ministers of both the countries, Khalid al-Falih and Alexander Novak in a joint statement said, they pledged ‘to do whatever it takes to reduce the global inventories to their five-year average’, has surprised the stock markets, raising crude prices up more than 1.5% in the Asian trade markets. Addressing the media in Beijing, Falih and Novak said, "There has been a marked reduction ...
Nikkei PMI has positive news for Indian manufacturing and services
By Abin Daya It just might be that things are slowly falling in place for the Indian economy. The Nikkei Purchasing Manager’s Index for Manufacturing and Services has positive news, both in performance and sentiments. What we now need is better capacity utilisation leading to improvement in private investment. A good monsoon this year should create that. Some indication of that is also seen in the performance of the infrastructure industries during the month of March. Performance improved from 1% growth in Feb, to 5% growth in Mar, though it was far from the 9.3% growth achieved a year back. While growth for the full year improved from the previous FY, the fertiliser industry seems to have been badly affected. One topic that ...
Growth in economic activity and trade overshadowed by rising deficit
Abin Daya the author of 'Basics of Trade: An India Perspective' is a FEMA expert, a career transaction banker, with close to 15 years of experience in corporate and transaction banking, in India. By Abin Daya Well, the effect of that abysmal performance of the core sector had to have some effect on the IIP. IIP numbers have come in at the lowest in 4 months with -1.2% growth. However, the coming months might give us some respite considering the improvement in economic activity during the month of March. And speaking of March, we have got a second consecutive month of double digit export growth during the month, and that has helped us pull off a positive growth in annual export figures after ...
Q3 GDP numbers surprise at 7%
By Abin Daya It has been over 19 months since the tumult over India’s GDP began. Many economists have questioned the government’s method of calculation since it was implemented in 2015. The latest announcement by the Indian government has placed the GDP at 7% which is a sudden increase from 4.7% as per growth estimates released in May 2013-14. The data released by the Central Statistics Office predict the GDP of Q3 FY17 at 7%. Let us look at the drivers behind it by breaking them up into components and comparing them with the previous figures. India’s GDP for Q3 of FY17 grew by 7% y-o-y, lower than the 7.4% (revised) growth of Q2 FY17 and higher than 6.9% of Q3 FY16 This has ...
Govt passed 50% of fall in global oil price to people: Oil Minister
We have returned 50% of fall in international crude oil prices to consumers while we have kept the remaining 50% in government treasury and invested in other sectors like social sector, said Oil Minister Dharmendra Pradhan Source: PTI To have a balanced fiscal strategy, we have invested the money saved in farm sector, infrastructure sector and the health sector, says the Minister Government on Wednesday admitted it has onpassed the benefit of only 50% of the reduced international crude oil prices to the consumers and kept the remaining half for being invested in the social sector. With the Opposition in Rajya Sabha accusing the government of "appropriating" and "not passing" the benefit of fall in international crude oil prices to consumers, Oil Minister ...