Once Upon a time in India Dobaara

Bollywood released its much awaited sequel of Ajay Devgan – Emraan Hashmi starrer “Once Upon a Time in Mumbaai” this Thursday. The jury is still out on whether the sequel, “Once Upon a Time in Mumbaai Dobaara” has lived up to the magic of first one (first one has some good lines delivered by Ajay and good acting skills of Emraan). In the meantime, there is another sequel being served to the country, which will definitely have wider ramifications than the movie.

This sequel could aptly be called “Once Upon a Time in India Dobaara” as India in an effort to curb currency decline, brings back capital controls, 90s style. RBI has announced slew of measures like reducing the Overseas Direct Investment (ODI) by Indian companies from 400% of net worth earlier to 100% now. Local residents also now have to go through RBI if they are sending more than $75,000 abroad for investments or otherwise. This limit was earlier set at $200,000.

RBI exempted banks from including fresh deposits from NRIs into reserve requirements, raised the ceiling on FCNR deposits to LIBOR + 400bps (300bps earlier) for 3-5 years deposits and banned the import of gold coins and medallions.

No points for guessing who’ll get hurt the most by these measures: the corporate as their plans to invest abroad due to weakening local investment climate are put on halt and; Local residents who bought residential property abroad (as some did in Southeast Asia at favorable terms during slowdown) and are making regular payments towards it.

Reader will vividly remember those 90’s movies where Amrish Puri and Ranjeet were widely feared bad guys, used to spend their nighttime near Bombay beaches with a torch in their hands, for their “consignment” which was most of the time, you guessed it right, used to be gold biscuits. Latest import curbs and rising duties on gold have already started turning local Indians into smugglers (See here and here) as already one high profile case of a member of big industrial house caught smuggling on Mumbai airport has been highlighted by local media.

I have long argued (see here and here) that problems with our currency are largely fundamental ones and these govt policies are at best, can only be termed shortsighted. Investors are going to sell off your currency if they don’t find any value in it, if not today, tomorrow. But this is one definite, which is going to happen. Therefore, instead of using weak currency to make your economy export competitive and make some efforts towards solving your structural problems, you stop your citizens from importing anything from abroad.

Some people might argue that focusing on structural problems may not yield any short-term result and nobody in the current establishment has time and patience to wait. But isn’t that the same attitude which has landed us in current mess.

You ask anyone in establishment about their purpose behind these measures, you get a terse two word reply: Rupee stabilization. What they don’t tell you is when they think rupee has stabilized. Given our country’s problem, it doesn’t look like it is going to happen anytime soon and there is a strong chance that current measures and controls are not as temporary as they are sounded out to be.