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India: Government borrowing generates inflation, widens the external deficit and crowds out much-needed investment. Can India now overcome its debt addiction?

India’s public finances

A walk on the wild side

Government borrowing generates inflation, widens the external deficit and crowds out much-needed investment. Can India now overcome its debt addiction?

Feb 23rd 2013 | MUMBAI |From the print edition

INDIA has grappled with its public finances for long enough. When presenting its first budget after independence in 1947, the finance minister of the day insisted that the country was not living beyond its means. Yet every budget since has failed to produce a surplus. India borrows more heavily than typical big emerging economies and faces more periodic crises. Palaniappan Chidambaram is the latest to try to tame the fiscal beast. He became finance minister, for the third time, last July. On February 28th he will present his budget, possibly the last one before the ruling Congress Party goes to the polls, which must take place by mid-2014.

India’s economy is a concern. Growth is running at about 5%, nearly half what it once was. The external deficit is at a record, while inflation remains stubbornly high. Last year India faced the threat of a downgrade of its credit rating to “junk” status. Thankfully, Mr Chidambaram has shaken Congress from its stupor. The party is to blame for the present budget mess, having launched a pre-election spending spree in 2008 that continued. Subsidies, mainly of fuel, almost doubled, to 2.4% of GDP. The central government’s deficit has been 5-6.5% of GDP. Add in spending by the states, and India’s overall budget deficit has been running at a wild 8-10% of GDP. Read more of this post

Indonesia: Gloomy politics, so how long can the bright economics last?

Indonesia’s economy

Gloomy politics, so how long can the bright economics last?

Feb 23rd 2013 | JAKARTA |From the print edition

ITS public life is dismal, but Indonesia’s economy is, for now, among the brighter performers in Asia. The corruption scandals engulfing the ruling Democratic Party underscore the disappointment of Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono’s second and final term. The president exercises only a weak grip on the helm, and conservatives in government have manoeuvred economic modernisers to the sidelines. Yet the economy zips along. It grew by 6.2% last year, and the government now aims for growth of 6.8% in 2013.

After a decade of painful restructuring for banks and companies, Indonesian businesses are ramping up spending on new factories and infrastructure. Investment now accounts for nearly a third of GDP. Annual imports of things like machinery and mechanical equipment are growing at double-digit rates.

Yet Indonesia’s investment-led boom is now posing problems. Exports are weak, because of depressed global demand and lower prices for many of the natural resources that the country sells to the world. Merchandise imports are growing strongly. The result is a collapse in the trade balance. After a surplus of almost $26 billion in 2011, Indonesia posted a trade deficit last year—its first annual deficit since the late 1960s. The current account, too, swung into deficit in 2012, ending a 14-year run of surpluses (see chart). It has all put pressure on the rupiah, recently one of Asia’s worst-performing currencies. Read more of this post

Bernanke’s efforts to rescue the economy could result in more than a half trillion dollars of paper losses on the central bank’s books if interest rates rise abruptly from recent levels

Fed Faces Explaining Billion-Dollar Losses in Stress of QE3 Exit

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke’s efforts to rescue the economy could result in more than a half trillion dollars of paper losses on the central bank’s books if interest rates rise abruptly from recent levels.

That sum is the difference between the value of securities in the Fed’s portfolio on Dec. 31 and what they may fetch in three years, according to data compiled by MSCI Inc. of New York for Bloomberg News. MSCI applied scenarios devised by the Fed itself for stress-testing the nation’s 19 largest banks.

MSCI sees the market value of Fed holdings shrinking by $547 billion over three years under an adverse scenario that includes an economic contraction and rising inflation. MSCI puts the Fed’s mark-to-market loss at less than half that, or $216 billion, if the economy performs in line with consensus forecasts of gradually rising growth, inflation and interest rates.

The potential losses are unprecedented in the Fed’s 100- year history, and Bernanke has never used congressional testimony to give a detailed explanation of the consequences of shifting hundreds of billions in interest-rate risk from private portfolios onto the Fed’s balance sheet. Today, Bernanke appears before senators who oversee the Fed and may face questions on how the $3.1 trillion balance sheet will affect an exit from the stimulus program, remittances to taxpayers, and its ability to stabilize inflation expectations. Read more of this post