On June 21st, the Monetary Policy Committee made its minutes of the monetary policy discussions public. These MPC minutes are extremely valuable as they provide an insight into the thinking of each of the members. This MPC meeting came in the aftermath of weak GDP growth numbers in the aftermath of the demonetization as well …
Back in December 2016, the USD-INR was quoting at Rs.68.5/$. The rupee had weakened sharply in the aftermath of the demonetization drive and was threatening to convincingly break the lows of August 2013. Most currency experts and analysts were of the view that in Real Effective Exchange Rate (REER) terms, the rupee was already overvalued …
The IIP number for the month of June 2017 came in sharply lower at -0.1% compared to 1.7% in the previous month of May 2017. A correction in the IIP was expected in the month of June due to the impact of the GST launch, although it was not expected to dip into negative territory. …
The trade data for the first four months of fiscal year 2017-18 has followed a standard pattern. Exports have been on an uptrend but imports in each of the months have been growing much faster. In fact, the average monthly trade deficit has also settled at a much higher plane compared to what we had …
The core sector update for the month of June 2017 came in below expectations at a level of just 0.4%. As is well known, core sector accounts for 40.27% of the constituents of the IIP and hence a positive trend in the core sector is very important for a proper revival in the IIP numbers. …
With retail inflation coming in at just 2.15%, we have touched a 5-year low on retail inflation. Low inflation has largely been driven by negative food inflation in the month of May 2017. The impact of food inflation gets more pronounced as it constitutes nearly 50% of the overall CPI inflation. The chart below captures …
The PMI manufacturing and the PMI services for the month of May have stayed above the 50-mark indicating that both are still in expansion mode. For the month of May, while services showed a positive momentum, manufacturing showed a negative momentum. But then, as the chart below depicts, the services sector also witnessed a much …
The monetary policy announced by the RBI on 07th June may have maintained status quo on rates, but there are certain distinct advantages that are implicit for the rate sensitives. When we are referring to rate sensitives here, we are restricting ourselves to banks, NBFCs and housing companies. While auto companies are also theoretically rate …
The index of industrial production (IIP) for the month of April 2017 came in lower at 3.1% compared to 3.8% in the previous month. However, the big takeaway is that the IIP has finally moved into a new post-demonetization trajectory. The demonetization exercise that began in November 2016 had a lagged impact on the IIP …
The Monetary Policy announced by the RBI on 07th June maintained status quo on repo rates. This was largely along expected lines. It was already factored into most estimates that any rate cut decision would predicate on a variety of other factors like the trajectory of CPI inflation, growth traction post-remonetization, health of the banking …
