สรุปข่าวเศรษฐกิจอินเดียประจำวันที่ 20 มกราคม 2557

Ministries feel the pinch as Finance Ministry tightens spending, move may lower fiscal deficit to 4.5% of GDP

The unprecedented spending cut ordered by the finance ministry last week has left officials at other ministries and departments fuming but North Block is in no mood to relent. The drastic reduction could even see the fiscal deficit contract to 4.5-4.6% of GDP, lower than the budgeted 4.8%. As per revised estimates communicated to ministries at the end of last week, expenditure in some cases has been cut by as much as 30% below budget estimates, leaving some departments wondering how they will manage the remaining months. Those facing the brunt of the cuts are rural development, which has one of the biggest allocations, power, human resources development, commerce, water resources and the finance ministry itself. Ministries and departments suffering the worst cuts are not amused, with some officials warning of its impact on the economy, not something the UPA government will want to countenance as it prepares to seek re-election. "Plan spending is like a sitting duck... But reduction in capital expenditure will hurt growth," said a senior government official, pointing out that much of the slack in spending had been removed in the last budget. Finance ministry officials countered this by arguing that in many instances the cuts are savings that would have been made anyway on account of the low utilisation of allocated funds. Besides, spending by some ministries has been slow. A government rule prohibits ministries and departments from spending more that 33% of their budget in the fourth quarter. Some ministries could spend only 23-36% of their total allocation in the first eight months of the financial year, facing the biggest cuts. Finance minister P Chidambaram has made it clear time and again that he will not allow breach of the 4.8% target, defining it as a "red line" that will not be crossed.

(Source: Economic Times)

Shipping ministry to soon meet port capacity target of FY14

The Ministry of Shipping, which is looking to increase the capacity of major ports by 250 million tonnes in this financial year, has already awarded 102 million tonnes capacity in April-December and will be awarding the balance in the next three months, Shipping Secretary Vishwapati Trivedi said on Sunday. He was speaking on the sidelines of the Eleventh Annual Conference on Ports in Mumbai. The fourth terminal of Jawaharlal Nehru Port Trust (JNPT), which is a part of the 10 projects to be awarded, alone will bring in 64 million tonnes, Trivedi said. Bids for JNPT’s fourth container terminal will be opened in February and award will happen before March.

(Source: Business Standard)

Wal-Mart sets up new firm in India

Global retail giant Wal-Mart has registered a new company in India as it prepares to enter the country's lucrative multi-brand retail market with a new partner. The American retail major and Bharti Enterprises decided to part ways in October last year, bringing an end to their six-year long partnership. The retailer has registered a new company called 'Wal-Mart India Private Ltd' in the country, according to the data available with the ministry of corporate affairs. According to the information, the new entity was registered on January 15. After parting ways with Bharti group in October last year, Wal-Mart had said it was studying the feasibility of India's FDI policy in multi-brand retail before finalising plans to enter the segment. The retailer and Bharti Enterprises had last year decided to independently own and operate separate business formats in the country. Wal-Mart is looking for a partner in India. In December 2013, Wal-Mart received the green signal from the Competition Commission of India (CCI) to purchase Bharti group's almost 50% stake in their Indian joint venture for wholesale stores business.

(Source: Financial Express)

New job generation dropped in 2013: Assocham

India's job market failed to expand in 20 of the 32 sectors tracked by the Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India (Assocham) in 2013. The chamber's analysis - Job Scenario in 2013: A Review - painted a bleak picture for Gujarat's cities in new job generation with Ahmedabad, Surat, Vadodara and Gandhinagar witnessing a fall of between 6.5 per cent and 19 per cent in new job generation in 2013, compared to the previous year. Assocham's analysis came on a day when the Bharatiya Janata Party's (BJP) prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi talked of waging a war against unemployment at the party's national council on Sunday. Delhi and the adjoining National Capital Region (NCR), on the other hand, had a one-fourth share in jobs created in 2013. The analysis sourced data primarily from vacancies posted by about 4,500 companies via job portals such as timesjobs.com, naukri.com, monster.com and shine.com, among others, along with advertisements offering employment opportunities published in national and regional newspapers across 56 prominent cities. As such, it is not an exhaustive job data. In all, jobs created in the sectors analysed dipped 0.4 per cent to 550,000 in 2013 compared with 552,000 in the previous year.Information technology (IT) , information technology-enabled services and the IT hardware sector together accounted for 43 per cent of the total number of new jobs generated in 2013. However, these sectors altogether recorded a one per cent drop in employment generation as the sectors created 236,000 new jobs in calendar year 2012 against 234,000 in 2013, the analysis showed. The sectors showing an increase in jobs created in 2013 include the banking, financial services and insurance sector (15 per cent), academics (eight per cent), other manufacturing (3.6 per cent), telecom (3.4 per cent), automobile (3.2 per cent) and real estate, construction and engineering (7.1 per cent). Amid the top five metros, NCR and Bangalore clocked 12 per cent and four per cent year-on-year growth in job generation in 2013, respectively. On the other hand, Chennai, Kolkata and Mumbai registered a drop of 21 per cent, two per cent and 22 per cent, respectively. So far as performance of other tier-I cities are concerned, Hyderabad recorded a marginal increase of one per cent in job generation, while Ahmedabad saw a decline of 6.5 per cent.

(Source: Business Standard)

Economic Section

Royal Thai Embassy