Sunday, December 06, 2020

Why do foreigners expect to make profits at this time?

"In line with economists' fascination with alphabets, we see a 'double barrel V'-shaped (one V over the other) recovery for India," wrote Sonal Varma and Aurodeep Nandi. The festival demand boosted manufacturing, the government is procuring enough vaccines, interest rate is negative, which should encourage borrowing, and the global economy will recover in 2021. However, "India's pre-pandemic crisis involving a triad of weak balance sheets -- of corporates, banks and shadow banks -- are now skeletons temporarily hidden inside the cupboards of moratoria, credit guarantee schemes and procedural delays to the recognition of bad loans." "Job cuts and salary adjustments have not been as widespread as originally apprehended despite the severe impact on the revenue of companies in the aftermath of Covid-19 pandemic, a study has revealed." The Indian economy will enter a 'Goldilocks' phase in 2021, said Morgan Stanley, which means moderate growth without inflation. "The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) on Friday held interest rates steady, forecast a lower GDP contraction for the second half of the year, and sharply raised inflation projections, asserting that growth will return to the positive territory in the third and fourth quarters of the 2020-21 fiscal year," reported Times of India. "Normally, with this kind of elevated inflation scenario, the regulator would have treaded a more careful path," but, "given the extraordinary situation, the RBI decided to give growth a priority over immediate price stability," approved Sunil Sanghai. "This is clearly visible in the equity markets' reaction with the BSE Sensex Index touching the 45,000 mark which has not been witnessed in this last year." "A repo rate of 4% when inflation is expected to stay above 6% means that negative real interest rates by design," wrote an editorial in the Economic Times. We can only hope that the RBI is not allowing inflation to go unchecked only to help the government reduce its debt load as the government has announced it will need to borrow Rs 12 trillion this year to meet its expenses. However, RBI's tricks may not work because tax collections may not rise in line with inflation. "In India, the net profits of listed companies grew 25 percent (in real terms) last quarter. This despite revenues shrinking because firms aggressively cut costs, including employee compensation," wrote Sajjid Z Chinoy. No salary, no income tax. And if demand does recover, inflation is bound to shoot up because "the pump price of petrol is set to breach all-time high levels next week". Foreign portfolio investors (FPI) "pumped in a net sum of Rs 16,520 crore (Rs 165.20 billion) into equities and Rs 1,298 crore (Rs 12.98 billion) in the debt segment during December 1-4". A total of Rs 629.51 billion in November. Clearly, they expect huge profits. Who will pay for those profits? Dread finding out.

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