New York Times (January 9)
India’s “man-made currency crisis” has had real costs and limited benefit. Two months after the surprise move to invalidate over 80% of existing currency, “the manufacturing sector is contracting; real estate and car sales are down; and farm workers, shopkeepers and other Indians report that a shortage of cash has made life increasingly difficult.”
Tags: Benefit, Car sales, Contracting, Costs, Crisis, Currency, Farm workers, India, Manufacturing, Real estate, Shopkeepers, Shortage
Bloomberg (December 4)
In India, “the chaos accompanying ‘demonetization’ hasn’t eased up noticeably. It seems likely the disruption to the economy…will hit growth sharply for at least a few quarters. It’s tough to say for how long and by how much; we are in uncharted territory here and guesses have varied widely.” There is a very loose consensus, however, that the move by Prime Minister Modi to invalidate 86% of the currency in circulation could cause GDP growth to fall by approximately 2 percentage points.
Tags: Chaos, Currency, Demonetization, Disruption, Economy, GDP, Growth, India, Modi
Bloomberg (November 16)
“One week after India’s sudden declaration that 500- and 1,000-rupee notes were no longer legal tender, the economy is in chaos.” Designed to shake out black money, “what seemed at first to be a masterstroke by Prime Minister Narendra Modi now looks like a grave miscalculation.” The move invalidated over 80% of the currency in circulation, crippling the economy. “The central bank has struggled to print replacement denominations—and the new notes are the wrong size for existing ATMs.” It could be months before things return to normal.
Washington Post (May 22)
“With the Asian economic juggernaut coming to an end, due to lower growth in China, an aging Japan and South Korea, and India’s ongoing problems with corruption and a bureaucracy that impedes structural reform, the continent must be viewed from another angle: as a department store of many of the world’s gargantuan political and military challenges. Indeed, unless Asia’s strategically consequential states can significantly mitigate, if not resolve, the region’s political and military deficits, Asia’s rise will never be completed.”
Tags: Aging, Asia, Bureaucracy, Challenges, China, Corruption, Economic juggernaut, Growth, India, Japan, South Korea, Structural reform
The Economist (April 16)
“Across the developing world, solar power is hitting its stride.” In 2015, “global solar-energy capacity rose by 26% last year,” with China and India accounting for much of the gain. China displaced Germany in 2015 “to become the biggest producer of solar energy, benefiting from its dominance of solar-panel manufacturing and policies to reduce dependence on dirtier fuels, such as coal.” Not content to be left behind, India is also racing ahead with plans to increase solar installations twentyfold. “KPMG, a consultancy, expects solar’s share of India’s energy mix to rise to 12.5% by 2025.”
Tags: Capacity, China, Coal, Developing world, Energy mix, Germany, India, Manufacturing, Solar power
Bloomberg (March 30)
“India has eclipsed China as the world’s fastest-growing major economy with gross domestic product projected to expand 7.6 percent in the fiscal year through March.”
Bloomberg (March 18)
Mercari Inc. just “became the first Japanese startup worth at least $1 billion,” making it Japan’s only unicorn. “Though the valuation is an accomplishment for Mercari, it also highlights the dearth of major private startups in the world’s third-largest economy.” Of the 155 unicorns worldwide, 92 are in the U.S., 25 in China, seven in India and only one in Japan. “Japan has suffered from a lack of venture capital and a risk-averse culture where the best and brightest strive for stable jobs at big companies and then stay for life.”
Tags: China, India, Japan, Mercari, Risk-averse culture, Startup, U.S., Unicorn, Valuation, Venture-capital
The Economist (March 5)
“Every second three more Indians experience the internet for the first time. By 2030 more than 1 billion of them will be online.” Smart phone usage is soaring. And “no battle for the online future of India is more intense than the one now being waged in e-commerce.”While this is a “local battle for customers,” it is “also a battle for the future” that will likely prove “a better template for the e-commerce battle in other emerging markets.”
Tags: Customers, E-commerce, Emerging markets, Future, India, Intense, Internet, Online, Smart phone
New York Times (October 15)
“India is a vigorous democracy that has sent an orbiter to Mars. Yet its children are more likely to starve than children in far poorer nations in Africa. In a remarkable failure of democracy, India is the epicenter of global malnutrition: 39 percent of Indian children are stunted from poor nutrition.”
The Economist (October 10)
“Every so often a country comes along whose economic transformation has a vast impact on the world’s climate system. For the past generation that country has been China. Next it will be India.”
Tags: China, Climate, Economic transformation, Generation, Impact, India
