|By Matein Khalid| David Cameron, Wall Street’s elite, Mutti Merkel, Obama, the Eurocrats of Brussels, the great and the good of the City and the IMF’s Lady Christine all got it so horribly wrong. I slept Thursday night with sterling at 1.50 on New York and awoke to see it trade at 1.34 on Friday, a 30 year low before the Plaza Accords. Britain has voted to […]
|By Matein Khalid| Sterling sell off in the world currency markets and the sheer populist appeal of Boris Johnson suggests the world should not rule out a geopolitical shock that will unnerve financial markets and lead to the mother of all rate cuts at the Bank of England. If Britain votes to leave the EU, the only currency I want to own is the Swiss franc and gold, […]
Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund made its highest-profile deal, investing $3.5 billion in U.S. ride-share company Uber Technologies Inc. as the country seeks to diversify its assets with more overseas acquisitions. Yasir Alrumayyan, managing director of the Public Investment Fund, will take a board seat at the San Francisco-based company after the deal, which values Uber at $62.5 billion, the company said in a statement. It’s the biggest […]
|By Matein Khalid| In retrospect, 2016 will go down in German political and economic history as a significant game changer, on the scale of 1989 (fall of the Berlin Wall), 1990 (reunification) and 1999 (the Euro), even 1945 (launch of Deutschemark), 1945 (Third Reich surrenders), 1943 (Stalingrad) and 1933 (Hitler elected). Chancellor Merkel, renamed Mutti Multi kulti, allowed a million migrants to settle in Germany. The far right […]
|By Matein Khalid| If ever there was a year to win or lose money big time in emerging markets, 2016 was it. As an investor in the world’s dark alleys (the Third World rebranded as EM!), I am forced to dissect geopolitical, government/monetary policy, foreign exchange, flows, positioning and current account, volatility and credit cycle trends across emerging markets to develop money making strategies. It helps that I […]
India’s most reliable source of foreign funding is under threat. Remittances fell to $15.8 billion last quarter, the lowest since April-June 2011 and a 9.4 percent drop from a year earlier, as the global slowdown and slumping oil prices reduce demand for foreign workers. Indians working abroad — from construction laborers in Dubai to Silicon Valley engineers — send home the most money in the world, helping to pay for […]
U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron will chair a meeting of ministers on Thursday morning as he weighs how to avoid the closure of an iconic steel plant in South Wales without making costly financial promises. Cameron called the meeting and Business Secretary Sajid Javid cut short a trip to Australia to address the crisis sparked by Tata Steel Ltd.’s decision late Tuesday to sell its plant in […]
|By Matein Khalid| I was surprised by the dovishness of the Federal Reserve’s FOMC policy statement last week given the white hot US labour market and metrics of wage inflation. Hence the $29 rally in gold, the plunge in the Volatility Index to 15, the fall in the US dollar and the surge in oil/mining shares. The Yellen Fed is still worried about deflation risk in China, Europe […]
|By Arabian Post Staff| Citibank has clarified that the ‘technical glitch’ that caused transmission of SMS messages to credit card customers about certain mysterious credit card transactions that they did not initiate has been resolved and there has been no data breach or compromising of personal information. The problem affected only a limited number of customers, the bank said further. Citibank credit card customers were on Friday surprised to […]
|By Matein Khalid| The sultanate of Oman has enjoyed phenomenal economic development success in the 45 year reign of His Majesty Sultan Qaboos bin Said. Modern Oman is one of the true social, political and economic success stories of the Arab world. However, the Achilles heel of the Omani economy is its huge dependence on oil and gas export earnings, 60% of the sultanate’s GDP. Standard and […]
NATHU LA NEW OUTPOST OF COMMERCE
By Ashis Biswas
While investors and business circles grumble over the tardy pace of growth in Indo-China bilateral trade through the Nathu La Himalayan outpost, Beijing is apparently not too keen to launch any export promotion initiative just yet. In the context of India’s large trade deficit vis-à-vis China, the reverse trend at Nathu La, where China imports far more from India than it exports, strikes most observers as an oddity.
In statistical terms, the volume of trade has increased considerably. In 2006, when movement between the two countries was resumed linking Sherathang, Nathu La in Sikkim with Rinqinjing, once part of the Tibet autonomous area(TAR)which is currently Southwest China, there was a trade turnover of Rs 20 lakh only !And there was nil import from China that year.
However, by Jan 2015,
WHY TAX/GREEN BREAK FOR INDIA’S RICH?
By Garga Chatterjee
On 16th January, with much fanfare, the Union government announced its “Start-up India” scheme. On attendance were big people, big enough not to deserve any income tax break in their next seven lives. But this is precisely what the Government of India (GoI) has offered – an income tax exemption for first three years of a “start-up”. There will also be tax exemption on capital gains. After all its fake environment-love recently in Paris, this GoI scheme has also offered a three-year exemption on environment law compliance! Entities will only need to self-certify! In the name of “start-up”, exactly what anti-environment, anti-labour racket are we starting up here? This will also be true for labour law and working condition compliance (including payment of wages and benefits to staff). Shamelessly, this whole sch
|By Matein Khalid| The collapse in Brent crude oil below $30, a 20% fall in the Tadawul share index in January 2016’s global equity bloodbath, the cut in fuel subsidies and geopolitical risk escalation in the Middle East has spawned speculation in financial markets that Saudi Arabia will devalue the kingdom’s riyal, now pegged at 3.75 against the US dollar. Senior princes of the royal family and […]
ECONOMY BEING HELD HOSTAGE BY BULLION MERCHANTS
By Nantoo Banerjee
Swiss banks may not be too happy with India’s latest round of searches for big Indian accounts there. But, largely impoverished India’s endless gold hunt, especially at a time when the global economy and trade are shrinking and stock markets around the world are going topsy-turvy following economic slow-down in China, has placed the Geneva-based World Gold Council on top of the world. India’s gold import last month hit a new 120-day high at nearly $4 billion while all other imports to the country shrank by over 15 per cent in value. The massive gold import by bullion merchants, mostly from Mumbai and Ahmedabad, widened the country’s trade deficit to $11.7 billion in just one month. In the pre-reform period, India’s annual trade deficit rarely topped $5 billion. During the current financial year 2015-16, t
In a world awash with cheap oil, buyers in the world’s biggest consuming region aren’t clamoring for an additional 500,000 barrels a day from Iran. As international sanctions against the country are lifted and Oil Minister Bijan Namdar Zanganeh looks to make good on his pledge to regain market share lost in Asia, he’ll have to contend with a global glut that’s dragged down prices and spawned […]
|By Arabian Post Staff| Dubai-headquartered private equity investment group Abraaj announced another investment in India to buy a majority stake in Quality CARE India Ltd, which runs CARE Hospitals from global PE firm Advent International. CARE, which operates a multi-specialty chain of 16 hospitals across nine cities, plans to expand in “underpenetrated” regions of India, as well as enter other markets where Abraaj operates, the Dubai firm […]
India’s rupee fell the most since November on speculation demand for riskier assets will be hurt as tensions in the Middle East intensify and poor Chinese economic data adds to concern over global growth. Emerging-market stocks and currencies dropped Monday as manufacturing in China weakened for a fifth straight month, the longest such streak since 2009. Saudi Arabia cut ties with Iran and expelled the Islamic Republic’s diplomats, […]
|By Matein Khalid| Emerging markets were an entirely predictable horror story once again in 2015. The oil/mining bust, currency meltdowns, China’s hard landing, sovereign credit downgrades, banking system crises, corruption scandals and geopolitical crises from Ukraine to Syria, the Black Sea to the South China Sea devastated investor wealth in emerging markets. India’s Sensex and Nifty were down 9% while the rupee has depreciated to 66 […]
Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s CEO, is continuing to advocate for his company’s plan to offer free but limited Internet access in India. Facebook’s Free Basics Internet service, formerly called Internet.org, has faced opposition in India, which has more people without Internet service than any other country. Critics of Zuckerberg’s plan have said that the service is contrary to Net neutrality, the principle that Internet providers allow equal access […]
|By Arabian Post Staff| Buoyed by sharp fall in gold prices globally, India is likely to see a jump of 11 per cent in imports of the metal to 1,000 tonnes this year, according to the All India Gems and Jewellery Trade Federation. The world’s second-biggest gold consumer imported around 900 tonnes in 2014. “Gold import is estimated at around 1,000 tonnes in 2015 calendar year, compared […]
CHINESE SLOWDOWN HAS TO BE MONITORED
By Anjan Roy
At long last the US Federal Reserve – America’s central bank—has raised the interest rates, albeit hardly. This is the first hike in interest rates by the US central bank in over a decade.
The US Fed rate hike has been by a very small margin – from zero to just about 0.25% to 0.5%. It was so gradual and soft that the rate hike did not cause the disruptions in the global financial markets that everyone expected from such a decision.
The first question here is how will it affect India? It should not, and this has been borne out by what happened in the day after the Fed rate hike. The stock market remained more or less flat. The exchange rate also remained stable. The fund managers did not immediately think of taking money out of India and that left the financial markets unruffled.
But then w
FOREIGN INVESTORS MAY GET SOME RELIEF
By G. Srinivasan
For the country’s corporate sector apprehensive of long pendency in courts and protracted litigation on commercial disputes for resolution, help is on hand at long last. The NDA government has set off a flurry of activities on this front to give a whiff of long-felt comfort to assuage investors’ enduring worries on this count. In the ongoing winter session of Parliament, the Law Commission of India’s report with its draft bill on Commercial Division and Commercial Appellate Division of High Courts and Commercial Courts Bill, 2015 was tabled. Subsequently, the House Panel on Personnel, Public Grievances , Law and Justice under the chairmanship of Mr. E.M. Sudarsana Natchiappan also submitted its report, which also took due note of the Ordinance promulgated by the Government on October 23, 2015 making certain improve
CENTRE MUST GIVE VIGOROUS PUSH TO SCHEMES
By Deepak Razdan
The Climate Change conference in Paris recognized that the key to combating global warming lay in promoting clean energy. A CAG (Comptroller and Auditor General of India) Report on the “Renewable Energy Sector in India” placed in Parliament in the current winter session revealed that despite India’s ambitious renewable energy plans, the country’s performance in the clean energy sector has been poor.
The renewable energy potential in India is 8,89,508 Mega Watt. Although the Government of India has been promoting the development of the sector for energy security as well as environmental protection, the exploitation of the two largest components i.e. solar energy and wind energy potential was only 0.35 and 21 per cent, and varied significantly across States.
The Planning Commis
|By Matein Khalid| The plunge in crude oil after OPEC’s Vienna conclave, Dr. Draghi’s failure to resist Bundesbank pressure not to fire another ECB easy money bazooka, Wall Street’s junk bond debacle and an imminent rise in the Fed Funds rate for the first time since 2006 will all shape the next big trades in Planet Forex. The Euro has risen to 1.10 on Draghi’s failure to […]
