World-Me-My viewpoint

With Bihar Assembly elections in the month of October and Prime Minister’s Visit to USA to attend UN General Assembly and meet CEOs of Silicon valley companies for investments in India, nothing much happened domestically. Many of the ministers of Ruling Party BJP are camping in Bihar for campaign with each of them camping there for at least 2-3 days and one Public Holiday in the middle of the week, this week can be taken as rather dull. As per the figures released by the Reserve Bank of India, Corporate India’s foreign borrowings increased by around 48% in the month of August 2015 compared to same month previous year. This is by both automatic approval route as well as External Commercial Borrowings. The borrowings in August 2016 stood at USD 750.76 Million in August 2015 compared to USD 507.40 Million in August 2014. The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has notified norms that allow banks to upgrade credit facilities extended to borrowing entities upon a change in ownership, so long ...

As per the figures released by the Ministry of Commerce and Industry, India’s merchandise exports registered a decline of 20.66% in Dollar terms (decline of 15.22% in Rupee terms) during August 2015 compared to August 2014. Exports for the period April – August 2015 declined by 16.17% (10.94% in Rupee terms compared to the same period last year. Global economic slowdown is a major cause for this decline. Merchandise exports contribute to around 15% of country’s GDP. Compared to August 2014, exports of Rice (-21.26%, other cereals (-40.10%), Iron Ore (-29.75%), Engineering Goods (-24.23%), Petroleum products (-44.30%) contributed to the negative growth in merchandise exports in August 2015 while Pharmaceuticals (13.33%), Jute Products (57.07%), Handicrafts & handmade carpets (54.46%) and Tea (10.68%) registered a growth. Imports also registered a decline of 9.95% at USD 33.74 Billion in August 2015 compared to August 2014. The decline in Rupee terms is around 3.77%. The imports ...

Weekly round up of Indian Economy - Week ended 12th September 2015 Index of Industrial Production (IIP) for the month of July was released during this week. Industrial output recorded a growth of 4.2% during the month July. This growth was possible due to the growth in outputs of Manufacturing, Capital Goods and Consumer Durables segments. Trend in IIP during from January 2015 till July is as follows Please note that IIP for June was initially estimated at around 3.8% but was revised later to 4.4%. A look at the components of IIP indicates that except for Consumer non-durables every other segment showed a good growth over same month previous year. Manufacturing sector up 4.7% in July 2015 compared to 0.3% down in July 2014 Capital good sector up 10.6% in July compared to 3% down in July 2014 Consumer durables up 11.4% in July this year compared to 20.4% down same month last year Consumer non-durables down 4.6% in July 2015 compared to 5.2% up in July 2014. It is ex...

Indian currency notes may need a new look as the people are looking at the same kind of currency notes for quite sometime now. Indian Rupee notes are of two categories. India uses notes of the following denominations 1, 2, 5, 10, 20, 50, 100, 500 and 1000. One Rupee (basic unit) is being issued by Government of India and bears the signature of the Finance Secretary. Rest of the notes are issued by Reserve Bank of India and carry the facsimile of the signature of its Governor.Of these the usage of coins in place of currency notes is more prevalent in case of those with denominations of Rs 1, 2 and 5. There is recent news items stating that the Government of India is thinking of reissuing the One Rupee currency notes which were last printed around 10-15 years back. The reverse and obverse images of the last one rupee note is as follows Similarly the Rs 2 note which is rare to find now a days appears as below If you look at these two notes the obverse side o...

Two days back the Apex Court of the country gave a ruling that hence forth the Government Advertisements should only carry the photographs of Prime Minister or President or Chief Justice of India.  Government ads is a major source of income for media be it print or electronic media. Government issues hundreds of advertisements every day for various purposes like calling for tenders (for government works), showcasing their achievements, public interest advertisements (like the recent ones featuring actress Ms Vidya Balan  for construction of toilets) etc. An estimated Rs 700 Crores was spent by the current government in the past one year on ads can give an idea as to how much is the government spend and the kind of exposure the individuals gets out of this exercise. The ads for Tenders which are issued by individual departments does not carry any photographs. However the ads issued by government showcasing their achievements carry the photographs of the Prime Minister ...

It is being now reported on Indian news channels that two earthquakes struck in quick succession in Nepal - China Border. One on Chinese side while the other happened on Nepalese side. The magnitude of the quake is around 7.4 on Richter scale.These were followed by after shocks of magnitude 5+. Tremors were felt in Northern and Eastern parts of India, mainly the national capital New Delhi. The tremors were also felt in Odisha (Orissa) and Bihar. It seems the Delhi Secretariat has been evacuated immediately. Around 80 people died in Nepal and 1100 injured in landslides. The epicentre of the earthquake is around 15 km from Mount Everest. It is good that Nepal closed the mountaineering activity immediately after the last earthquake around 15 days back.

Within days from the suspension of sentence of Mr Salman Khan, we witnessing one more controversial thing - Acquittal of J Jayalalitha, former Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu. This happened on appeal in a case where she was sentenced after 18 years of hearings in various courts (some of them were regular in Tamil Nadu itself and some special courts either constituted by Tamil Nadu Government or Supreme Court). The case is about assets disproportionate to the income of Jayalalitha and her associates (Sashikala, her son and some companies) by an amount of around Rs 66 Crores. In current days of where people talk about hundreds of Crores of rupees as loose change, the amount stated looks like a pittance. But remember around 18-20 years back this is a substantial amount. Even the much celebrated Bofors case involves a total amount of Rs 130 - 160 Crores only. A display of personal adoration which characterizes Tamil politics. In this picture people are pouring milk on the wall painting...