People's Democracy

Blowing Bubbles At The Bust

C P Chandrasekhar

WITH the elections behind it, the government has chosen to unveil the promised second instalment of the economic package that it claims will stimulate a slowing economy. Given the global fashion these days, some media observers have wrongly described this as the centre's second ''fiscal stimulus'' package. The package is not fiscal but more monetary in nature, with little emphasis on increasing government spending. Such an increase, in a context when tax collections are expected to be short of targets, would require additional deficit financing or credit-financed spending by the centre. Very clearly, unlike governments in many other countries in the world, the UPA in India has not shed the fiscal conservatism that is the centrepiece of its neo-liberal economic ideology. It is reticent to increase the fiscal deficit even in the current circumstances of declining inflation and slowing growth.

COMPONENTS OF

THE PACKAGE

In the event, the so-called stimulus package has three major components. The first, is a set of measures to be adopted by both the Reserve Bank of India and the government that are aimed at reducing interest rates and increasing the access to credit of firms, state governments and individuals. The repo rate, or the rate of interest on the borrowing by banks from the RBI, has been reduced by one percentage point to 5.5 per cent. In addition, banks are being encouraged to lend to the private sector through a number of measures including: a reduction in the Cash Reserve Ratio, or the cash balances they need to hold, by half a percentage point to 5 per cent of deposits; a reduction in the reverse repo rate or the interest they can earn by lending to the RBI rather than the public from 5 to 4 per cent; and a promised recapitalisation of banks with a government contribution of Rs 20,000 crore over two years, so as to enhance their credit delivery capacity. Banks are also to be coaxed into lending with guarantees on loans to small and micro enterprises, and higher credit targets.

It is not just domestic financial institutions that domestic borrowers are expected to tap. Access to credit from foreign sources has also been enhanced by : (i) scrapping the interest rate ceiling on external commercial borrowings (ECBs) made through the approval route; (ii) allowing ECB for investment in commercial real estate in the form of integrated townships; (iii) permitting non-bank financial companies (NBFCs) dealing exclusively with infrastructure financing to access ECBs; and (iv) raising the ceiling on FII investment in rupee-denominated corporate bonds from $6 billion to $15 billion. If domestic credit is unavailable or expensive, ''borrow from abroad'' is the slogan.

The second set of measures incorporated in the package aims to get state governments and the India Infrastructure Finance Company Limited (IIFCL) to borrow to finance capital, especially infrastructure, expenditure. State governments would now be allowed to resort to additional market borrowing of 0.5 per cent of the Gross State Domestic Product or around Rs 30,000 crore to finance capital expenditure. In sum, while the centre is unwilling to increase spending based on additional borrowing, it is willing to let states take that route and present it as part of a ''central package''. The other component of public deficit-financed spending is to come from the IIFCL, which, having been permitted to raise Rs 10,000 crore through the issue of tax free bonds by March 31, 2009, would now be allowed to raise an additional Rs 30,000 crore through similar bonds to finance infrastructure projects.

Finally, a third component of the package is directed at spurring the demand for automobiles. States are to be provided assistance up to June 30, 2009 under the JNNURM to buy buses for their urban transport systems. Buyers of commercial vehicles between January and March this year are being offered the benefit of accelerated depreciation of 50 per cent. And banks are now allowed to support NBFCs with credit for purchases of commercial vehicles.

INVITATION TO

BORROW & SPEND

Put these measures together and what we have is an element of compulsion on banks and financial institutions to lend and an invitation to different economic actors to borrow and spend. This includes borrowing in foreign exchange to finance expenditures in areas like real estate, which are unlikely to yield foreign currency revenues that can be used to meet future repayment commitments.

This structure of the so called ''stimulus'' package is shocking to say the least since it would only strengthen the kind of tendencies that generated the crisis in the developed countries in the first place. It is now widely accepted that the financial and real crisis in the US and other OECD countries occurred because of an easy money and cheap credit regime introduced in a world of deregulated and rapidly proliferating finance. This provided the basis for a credit-financed housing and consumption boom that was speculative in character and was self-propelling till such time as defaults began. That is, the speculative financial boom that went bust was not an independent and isolated phenomenon, but contributed to and drew sustenance from a debt-financed real economy boom. As a result, even though the crisis first appeared as a sub-prime housing loans problem, it soon snowballed into a full-fledged financial crisis that had severe recessionary implications for the real economy.

Moreover, once the crisis occurred and needed to be addressed, it became clear that merely pumping liquidity into the system or reducing interest rates was inadequate to get the economy going again. The end of the financial boom was accompanied by a sharp contraction of private sector demand on the one hand and the threat of insolvencies on Wall Street and Main Street on the other. The government therefore had to step in to both rescue failing firms and fuel demand directly. This made a fiscal stimulus the focus of policy leading to the current revival of Keynesianism in the US and parts of Europe.

WRONG

DIAGNOSIS

Seen in the light of that experience, the stimulus package that has been put in place over two phases in this country implicitly presumes that India's case is different. The problem here it is being suggested is indeed one of inadequate liquidity, of costly credit and of an unwillingness to lend. And it is being presumed that efforts to address these issues directly would not put India in a situation where it too would be using a speculative bubble to drive a real economy recovery and paving the way for a financial meltdown that would that would abort or subvert that recovery.

There are, however, clear indications that such assumptions are unwarranted. To start with, even if not as yet in a debt-driven crisis, India is substantially dependent on private credit to sustain growth. The so-called ''economic reform'', which included both fiscal reform that limited capital expenditure by the State and financial liberalisation that refocused bank lending in favour of retail credit, did transform the trajectory of growth. If earlier public spending was the principal stimulus for growth, this was substituted with debt-financed housing investment and private consumption. This required a relaxation of the terms on which and the volumes in which debt was available to households and the private sector. In the event, the share of retail credit in the total advances of the banking system has increased substantially and the direct and indirect exposure of the banks to sensitive sectors like the stock market and real estate has increased considerably. That is, India's recent near nine percent growth rate was also fuelled by debt, which has made this country's financial system vulnerable to large scale default.

INTO A

DEBT SPIRAL

Yet, what the government is attempting now is to coax, cajole and force banks into lending even more in the hope that there would be enough borrowers who would use that credit to revive flagging domestic demand and make up for sluggish exports. The objective appears to be to further inflate the embryonic credit bubble to prevent growth from slipping sharply.

In the process it is not just the banks, households and corporations that are being directed into a debt spiral; so are the state governments, who have been permitted an additional Rs 30,000 crore of borrowing. In a period when tax revenue collections are turning sluggish, when resource devolution from the centre to the states is biased in favour of the centre and when an impending pay revision is likely to strain the states' capacity, asking them to borrow and spend to help a recovery even when the centre holds back is indeed bizarre. What is needed is the transfer of more resources from the centre to the states since spending is likely to be quicker at the state level, helping stall the slump and paving the way for recovery. But no such transfer is forthcoming since the centre is holding back on its spending.

The centre's reluctance to spend has also resulted in a strange off-budget transaction in which it is willing to forego tax revenues to help the IIFCL to mobilise up to Rs 40,000 crore that will then be used to leverage and supplement private or public sector investment in infrastructure. It is by no means definite that such investment would be forthcoming in the midst of a down turn. On the other hand there are obvious dangers of adding to private debt exposure in this fashion. It would have been far more advisable for the government to undertake the expenditure and at least partly meet it with the revenues that it would have garnered through taxation when the recovery occurs.

PUTTING FOREIGN

RESERVES IN PERIL

Finally, as noted above, the package not merely relies on infrastructural investment financed with domestic debt, but encourages such spending financed with external commercial borrowing. This not merely adds to the debt spiral, but involves a currency mismatch inasmuch as infrastructural projects are unlikely to yield foreign exchange revenues that can be used to meet interest and amortisation commitments payable in foreign exchange. On the other hand, with global interest rates being much lower than domestic rates, firms may not adequately take account of exchange rate risks and opt for foreign borrowing whenever available. This could lead to solvency problems if the rupee depreciated sharply, and strain India's foreign reserve position if the exodus of foreign capital continues.

What does this reliance on private debt-financed spending to trigger a recovery indicate? One of the lessons that has come out of the global crisis is that if big financial firms are lightly regulated and permitted to discount risk when seeking profits, then it is likely that the government would have to nationalise them because letting them fail (as happened with Lehman Brothers and did not with AIG) could have adverse systemic effects. The implication was clear. Embracing deregulation and a minimal role for the State by relying on debt-financed private consumption and investment as part of a neo-liberal strategy leads up to a crisis-induced retreat from neo-liberalism in the form of nationalisation and State-financed bail outs. Capitalism could possibly do better by discarding neo-liberalism and providing a role for the State many conservative commentators began to argue. This is, however, a lesson that is difficult to absorb to the UPA government steeped in neo-liberal ideology. And that together with the fact that India's crisis is still in the making possibly explains the bizarre form that India's official ''stimulus'' takes.