Research News

02 May 2011
As time approaches for the Reserve Bank of India to announce its annual monetary policy for the year 2011-12, money markets have gone into a tizzy. Bond yields have gone up by around 20 points across maturities and across the rating spectrum. The ten-year benchmark government bond which was lapped up by an optimistic trading community at 7.80% in the first week of April, soon slipped to 7.90% and later to 8.07%.

29 March 2011
It was surprising to note the generous increases in social sector spending viz. health, poverty alleviation, employment guarantee schemes, agriculture, subsidized grains and fertilizers, education, women welfare, arts, culture, rural development and housing. As the focus shifted from Expenditure to Income, analysts were taken aback by the absence of any significant new taxes. In fact, there were some reductions in customs and excise slabs.

21 February 2011
In this centuries old children’s musical game, there is this farmer who acquires a wife, a child, a maid, a cow and sundry animals from the children around him. The last child left is the loser and, predictably enough, he is designated as the farmer for the next round. This tag of farmers being eternal losers is especially relevant in India where the farmer has perpetually been in the dell.

28 January 2011
Looking at the current hue and cry in India over food inflation, I guess many of us appear to have missed out the key points made by RBI Deputy Governor Subir Gokarn in his inaugural address at a special conference at the premier Indira Gandhi Institute for Development Research on 26 October 2010.

29 December 2010
RBI is holding a Tiger by the Tail Having earned well deserved global accolades for its deft handling of the 2008-09 financial crisis, the Reserve Bank of India embarked upon a new journey in January 2010 when it started the current cycle of interest rate tightening. By that time, the country had recovered completely from the trauma that a worldwide recession had induced.

2 September 2009
The markets are worried, nay, quite terrified by the direction interest rates seem to be taking. And you can hardly blame them as the specter of the Reserve Bank, relentlessly announcing auction after auction, continues to haunt them. This paper is the harbinger of good tidings as it strives to prove that interest rates are likely to remain soft with GOI yields being far softer than their current levels.