Maharashtra Youth Cong promises unemployed allowance of Rs 5000 a month

It also promises government scholarships for meritorious local students pursuing higher education in foreign universities, waiver of educational loan.

Monthly allowance of Rs 5,000 for educated unemployed youths and statutory 80 per cent reservation in jobs for local youths are some of the prominent promises made by Maharashtra Youth Congress in its “first-of- its-kind” manifesto for the October 21 assembly polls, which was released on Saturday.

It also promises government scholarships for meritorious local students pursuing higher education in foreign universities, waiver of educational loan and providing free of cost higher education to differently abled youths.

The document states that if elected to power the Congress-led government will stand guarantor for loans taken by wards of farmers for pursuing higher education.

Maharashtra Youth Congress President Satyajeet Tambe told reporters that as many as 30 million youth got connected to its platform as part of “Wake Up Maharashtra, Act Today for your Tomorrow” programme.

“Thousands of suggestions, views, ideas and solutions received so far were shortlisted and consolidated to create one-of-its kind ‘Youth Manifesto’,” he said.

He said education loans availed till September 30, 2019 will be waived.

Tambe promised increase in intake in government hostels for the needy youths and free higher education for all differently abled youths.

“Educated unemployed youth will receive an allowance of Rs 5,000 per month and statutory 80 per cent reservation in jobs for local youth,” he said.

Business Standard

Indian states' fiscal battle amid economic slowdown: Explained in 8 charts

The RBI study shows that the aggregate debt level could go beyond 25 per cent of GDP in the current year itself if off-budget guarantees are taken into account.

The Reserve Bank of India’s annual study on state budgets underlines weaknesses in financial position of states.

A large number of states are running fiscal deficit beyond the upper limit of 3 per cent of gross domestic product, laid down by the Fiscal Responsibility and Budget Management (FRBM) framework . Moreover, most of them are laggards in terms of per capita income levels. Owing to the tight revenue situation and the pressure on exchequer emanating from power utilities and farm sector support (loan waivers and income support), states are being compelled to borrow more .

The RBI study shows that the aggregate debt level could go beyond 25 per cent of GDP in the current year itself if off-budget guarantees are taken into account. Notice that debt level surged after 2016-17 due to UDAY.

This has put limitations on development-related spending, as interest payments and other compulsory spending is set to grow faster than capital expenditure this year . Higher debt levels are associated with lower economic growth, the study shows .

To make the debt sustainable, revenues need to grow at 14 per cent per year, higher than what the last three years have achieved.

Though revised estimates for 2018-19 show a higher growth, provisional actuals show a drop. Higher budgeted growth in 2019-20 has been flagged down by near stagnation in the financial year to date. The debt requirement is increasingly being catered to by market borrowings . But the market for state government bonds is too illiquid to be attractive with trade happening only for less than a third of trading days in several states .

As a result, foreign investors have stayed away from state government bonds. This financial year, FPI’s have put money in less than 3 per cent of the available limit to invest

Business Standard

Paytm founder Vijay Sharma says winning in India prepared him for the world

Sharma said the digital payments war is a huge opportunity and that India could produce the payment player which will go on to dominate the world.

Business Standard : Vijay Shekhar Sharma, 41, founded closely held One97 Communications and its brand Paytm (rhymes with ATM) almost two decades ago. It offered a variety of digital services before moving into payments in 2014, just as millions of urban Indians began shopping online.

Two years later, India’s banks created the Unified Payments Interface, a tech umbrella to help banks and fintech startups create services quickly, and the government eliminated high-value currency notes, turbocharging demand for Paytm’s services. Sharma, a self-described hippie who loves to sprinkle U2 and Pink Floyd lyrics into his conversation, now has backers including Alibaba’s Jack Ma, SoftBank’s Masayoshi Son, and Berkshire Hathaway’s Warren Buffett.

Paytm is the market leader in India, where KPMG sees digital payments growing at the fastest rate of any country, with transaction value rising at an estimated annual rate of 20.2 per cent from 2019 to 2023. But competition is heating up as Google, Walmart, and Facebook jump into India, wielding cashback offers to lure customers. Meanwhile, the government has proposed scrapping fees on digital payments, Paytm’s core product.

In an interview in Delhi, Sharma described his career and how Paytm is adapting to India’s changing market, cutting annual expenses 45 per cent and preparing to raise new funds to accelerate the next phase of growth in smaller cities.

What led you to digital payments and e-commerce?

I grew up in a small town called Aligarh where I studied in a very basic Hindi medium school [where Hindi is the medium of instruction]. I didn’t have fancy schooling. I was lucky to get into engineering college in Delhi at the age of 15. I taught myself English by memorizing rock songs and simultaneously reading translated textbooks in English and Hindi. When I graduated, I was the youngest teenage engineer out of the University of Delhi. As the Pink Floyd song [Breathe] goes,

Run, rabbit run.Dig that hole, forget the sun,And when at last the work is doneDon’t sit down it’s time to dig another one.For long you live and high you flyBut only if you ride the tideAnd balanced on the biggest waveYou race towards an early grave.

My early heroes were internet entrepreneurs Jerry Yang and Mark Andreessen. I started One97 Communications in 2000 and began by selling content to users through telecom operators. By 2010 the smartphone became the distribution channel. Payment became our thing, and destiny was in our hands. In 2014 we launched our licensed wallet product. By 2015, Ant Financial had invested in us, then Alibaba and then SoftBank.

HUL declares war on plastic with cardboard deodorant and bamboo toothbrush

Unilever is tying up with plastic collectors and recyclers in all developed countries and in large developing markets like India.

Business Standard : When Hindustan Unilever (HUL) decided to put a curve on its best-selling Pond’s talc pack some time back, its patrons may have assumed the move was aimed at breaking the monotony of the cylindrical shape used for decades. While breaking the boredom was one of the reasons, the slight curve at the belly of Pond’s talc packs allowed the consumer goods giant to save one-third of the plastic that goes into each pack.

More recently, its distributors found that HUL had removed the plastic packaging layer inside the cartons of the best-selling Dove soaps. Dove soap packs now lay naked inside the carton boxes. The move has helped the local arm of the British-Dutch multinational cut down on single-use plastic.

While these measures started some time ago, HUL’s parent company, Unilever, has now launched a concerted effort to curb its use of plastic globally. As the voices against plastic waste get louder, the company aims to cut the use of virgin plastic by half by 2025. It also wants to collect and process more plastic packs than it can consume in seven years.

Unilever is tying up with plastic collectors and recyclers in all developed countries and in large developing markets like India. Through them, it has committed itself to collect and processing around 600,000 tonnes of plastic annually.

However, at the heart of Unilever’s bold commitment lies its design efficiency. It hopes to slash its use of plastic from 700,000 tonnes annually to 100,000 tonnes by changing the design and packaging of its products.

According to Alan Jope, chief executive officer, Unilever, the design is the starting point of its project. “Reducing the amount of plastic we use and then making sure that what we do use increasingly comes from recycled sources is the goal. We are also committed to ensuring all our plastic packaging is reusable, recyclable, or compostable. This demands a fundamental rethink in our approach to our packaging and products. It requires us to introduce new and innovative packaging materials and scale up new business models, like reuse and refill formats, at an unprecedented speed and intensity,” said Jope.

Globally, the firm has reduced its plastic waste by a third since 2010. According to the company, through its ‘Less Plastic’ initiative, Unilever has explored new ways of packaging and delivering products — including concentrates, such as its new Cif eco refill, which eliminates 75 per cent of plastic.

Danger ahead: $63-bn stalled real estate projects a threat for Indian banks

As lenders stop new credit, builders are forced to offload properties.

Business Standard : Ashish Shah is caught in the middle of India’s latest financial crisis. As chief operating officer of Radius Developers, he’s struggling to fund construction of apartment complexes because of a liquidity crunch in the nation’s bloated shadow-banking sector.

“Real estate is a sitting duck,” said Shah. “The timing is very crucial as the slowdown has hit the real estate market quite hard. The industry can’t service interest, new interest, additional interest, because there is no cash flow.”

Radius and hundreds of other developers relied on loans from what India calls non-banking financial companies (NBFCs) to fuel a five-year property boom. That came to a halt a year ago with the default of one of the shadow banking sector’s leading lenders, Infrastructure Leasing & Financial Services Ltd. The resulting credit squeeze has left builders such as Radius and Omkar Realtors & Developers Pvt. looking for support, or, like scandal-hit Housing Development & Infrastructure Ltd., filing for bankruptcy.

There are $63 billion of stalled residential projects across the country, according to Anarock Property Consultants, and their developers have become locked in a downward spiral with shadow banks. As lenders stop new credit, builders are forced to offload properties. Prices fall, causing more real estate loans to turn sour, pushing more shadow banks toward default.

In turn, that has cast a shadow on traditional banks and dried up funding to other businesses, putting more stress on an already slowing economy.

For Radius, the crunch started when one of its main lenders, Dewan Housing Finance Corp., shut off new loans as it attempts to restructure some $12.7 billion debt to avoid bankruptcy. Shah said he gained a temporary reprieve by selling a project to Blackstone Group Inc., but like all builders, his company needs cash to operate while projects are being built.

Edelweiss Financial Services Ltd. and Indiabulls Housing Finance Ltd., which have some of the largest exposures to the sector, are also tightening funding.

The risks of exposure to real estate were underlined by the scandal surrounding HDIL. The Reserve Bank of India abruptly imposed withdrawal curbs on a small cooperative bank that it said had under-reported loans to the developer. The decision triggered panic withdrawals from the bank, prompting the RBI to issue a statement to reassure the public that the banking system is “safe and stable.”

After FB, Netflix, more US tech giants turn to India for new apps release

Besides organic growth, acquisitions are another strategy for these companies in India, especially since they are facing more scrutiny back home and in western Europe.

India is emerging as the testing and acquisition playground for global consumer technology companies, especially the so-called FAANGs, according to a veteran internet analyst.

RBC Capital Markets’ Mark Mahaney, who calls himself Wall Street’s “oldest internet analyst” after covering the sector for more than two decades, said India is now more popular than markets like China because it has the same growth dynamics but with fewer regulations.

As one of the largest economies and most populous countries in the world, India has turned into a testing ground for companies such as Facebook Inc., which has used it to beta-test a payments feature for WhatsApp. Netflix Inc. rolled out a mobile plan in India at 199 rupees ($2.80), much cheaper than what it charges for a basic plan elsewhere, and has created original content to capture more market share.

“India does have regulations but it doesn’t seem to be as protectionist as China,” said Mahaney. India has been considering a new law that would require personal data to be stored locally, which could impair the operations of the Internet giants but Mahaney remains confident they can still penetrate the market.

Besides organic growth, acquisitions are another strategy for these companies in India, especially since they are facing more scrutiny back home and in western Europe. “There’s an opportunity to build growth” in Asia, particularly in India, Mahaney said.

Amazon.com Inc. has already tried its hand at deals in the South Asian nation by attempting to acquire Indian e-commerce pioneer Flipkart Online Services Pvt., before it was snapped up by Walmart Inc. last year.

Facebook, Netflix, Amazon and Alphabet Inc. can all win big in India, said Mahaney, who has a buy rating on the stocks. “India is less than 5% of the Amazon’s total revenues but it has the potential” to get to that level within five years, Mahaney said.

Business Standard

Monetary policy review: RBI set to cut rate. Question is by how much?

The policy decision will be announced at 11:45 a.m. in Mumbai, followed by a press conference 15 minutes later by Das.

Business Standard : The Reserve Bank of India is set to deliver a fifth straight interest rate cut Friday, although economists are unsure of the quantum following an unconventional 35 basis-point easing last time.

While all 39 economists surveyed by Bloomberg News expect a reduction, their forecasts range from 15 basis points to 40 basis points. The RBI has lowered borrowing costs to a nine-year low of 5.4% through 110 basis points of easing so far in 2019.

The meeting of the six-member Monetary Policy Committee led by Governor Shaktikanta Das comes amid growing concerns about India’s banking and financial sector, and just weeks after Prime Minister Narendra Modi eased fiscal levers by announcing a surprise $20 billion tax break for companies.

The policy decision will be announced at 11:45 a.m. in Mumbai, followed by a press conference 15 minutes later by Das.

Here’s a look at what else to watch out for:

Growth

The RBI has lowered its growth forecast for the current fiscal year three times already, with the latest revision in August pegging growth at 6.9%. Data since has shown gross domestic product expansion slowing to 5% in the June quarter, the weakest pace in six years. That may prompt the central bank to revisit the numbers once again.

The latest growth numbers “look much worse,” Das said recently, referring to RBI’s projection of 5.8% expansion in the April-June period. “There is a slowdown, which was evident and at the last MPC we very clearly said that growth seems to be losing traction and therefore, growth is a matter of highest priority.”

Inflation

A recent spike in onion prices notwithstanding, headline inflation has stayed below the RBI’s 4% medium-term target for 13 straight months.

Food and beverage prices, which account for about half of the consumer price basket, have climbed on the back of a surge in urban food inflation. Das has said gains in food inflation are cyclical and there won’t be much pressure on prices, given monsoon rains appear to be normal.

Core inflation, which strips out volatile food and fuel prices, has been decelerating amid subdued demand. That will give the central bank ample space to keep policy accommodative in the coming months.