Showing 1 - 10 of 16
Investment will not bring peace to Kashmir
News, Mihir Sharma, Published on 08/08/2019
» India's parliament has rubber-stamped the government's decision to end Kashmir's 70 years of autonomy and turn it into a "union territory" closely supervised by New Delhi.
Why India's airlines fail to take off
News, Mihir Sharma, Published on 03/12/2018
» Anyone puzzled by how the Indian economy manages to grow swiftly while somehow failing to be prosperous could do worse than look at the state of India's airlines. Over the past four years, passenger growth in India has been rapid: The number of flights taken has increased between 15% and 20% per year. Demand growth this year is likely to be the highest in the world. Yet the industry itself hasn't benefited. Almost every Indian airline is struggling.
Belt and Road hits a pothole in Pakistan
News, Mihir Sharma, Published on 12/10/2018
» Pakistan's government has finally admitted it needs help. Finance Minister Asad Umar says he will be meeting officials of the International Monetary Fund in Bali this weekend. There he'll try and work out the terms for a bailout that would cover a US$10 billion (328 billion baht) hole in Pakistan's financing needs.
Why demonetisation was a 'failure'
News, Mihir Sharma, Published on 03/09/2018
» The Indian central bank's final tally of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's 2016 demonetisation drive -- intended to take money derived from tax evasion out of circulation -- showed that 99.3% of outlawed high-value banknotes had been returned. That's a severe loss of face for officials, who had argued that holders of the cash would rather destroy it than return it to banks, providing a windfall for the government.
China's Silk Road isn't so smooth
News, Mihir Sharma, Published on 12/07/2018
» You may not have noticed, what with the outbreak of trade war with the US and all, but China's economic diplomacy has had a bad few weeks. The country's flagship Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is dealing with ever-greater resistance, slowing a momentum that once seemed unstoppable. In fact, I'd argue that the BRI is stalled.
Tiny ad may set Indians free at last
News, Mihir Sharma, Published on 16/06/2018
» It was the most carefully examined square of newsprint in recent Indian history. Last week, a small job ad appeared on the inside pages of some newspapers looking for candidates for the post of "joint secretary" in the Indian government. Within a few hours, the ad had gone viral: Opposition politicians had weighed in, Twitter was agog and hundreds of thousands of 40ish Indians wondered if they had one last opportunity to make their parents proud.
India's banks need more than a bailout
News, Mihir Sharma, Published on 27/10/2017
» India has long been faced with a slow-motion bank crisis.
New tax system all tangled up
News, Mihir Sharma, Published on 28/09/2017
» India's new indirect tax system, which for the first time tries to standardise most taxes across this vast country's many states, is proving to be even more difficult and disruptive to implement than first feared. That speaks to the unnecessary complexity the government's introduced into what should have been the simplest of laws.
No end in sight to India's slow-motion bank crisis
News, Mihir Sharma, Published on 01/03/2017
» India's slow-moving banking crisis continues to drag on, as ponderous and unstoppable as the state-controlled banking sector itself. A recent study found that the gross "non-performing assets" of state banks rose by 55% in 2016, and 135% in the last two years. They now account for 11% of all state bank loans.
Budget must address India's reputation problem
News, Mihir Sharma, Published on 31/01/2017
» One of the least enviable jobs in the world at the moment has to be that of the Indian finance minister. Arun Jaitley is to present his fourth annual budget to India's parliament tomorrow amid terrible headwinds -- mostly caused by his government's bewildering and disruptive decision to invalidate 86% of India's currency last November. If he's to revive growth, the first thing he has to do is rethink his priorities.