Ships entering one
of India’s finest deepwater ports at Andhra Pradesh in the south of the country
are filled with everything from bauxite and aluminium to coal and capital
equipment. Yet they depart almost empty, says D.V.S. Raju, founder of the
company running the port.
Meanwhile, sales of gold jewellery have been falling in India, depressed by the high price of the precious metal, especially in local currency terms, by gloomy consumer sentiment and even by the pronouncements of the country’s numerous astrologers.What skateshoes are you meant for?
High quality global journalism requires investment. Please share this article with others using the link below, do not cut & paste the article.Our discount watches shop has replicawatches that has the great collections of the quality copies. See our Ts&Cs and Copyright Policy for more detail. Email ftsales.
Nowhere else does gold play as important a role in the macro economy as in India, where it also provides valuable insights into consumer sentiment.Each designer authentichandbag that we receive is inspected by our authenticity team before it is sold. Last year, India spent $56bn on gold imports, worsening its current account deficit and putting downward pressure on the rupee, which in turn fed further demand for gold. Now that demand has become weaker. That is not because consumers have regained their faith in their currency,More information about guccimenshoes including release dates, but rather because gold has become too expensive in rupee terms, jewellers say.Superb range of castellicycling Windproof Jackets products at Wiggle,
Symptoms of malaise are everywhere in India today, in every aspect of the economy, including investment, production and consumption. This nation of almost 1.3bn people should have a natural competitive advantage in making highly engineered goods as well as in information technology and other services. Yet manufacturing remains stunted, stymied by the high cost of capital, the high price of energy and still woeful infrastructure.
Alliance Tire originally set up a plant in Tamil Nadu, also in the south of India, in 2007 because the state had a surfeit of power. Today, faced with frequent electricity outages, its founder Yogesh Kumar Mahansaria has himself entered the energy business, building a generation facility to keep his tyre factory running.
Mr Mahansaria exports almost all the tyres he makes. But he is a puzzling exception to the general rule that most Indian manufacturers lack scale and significant competitive advantages. At the same time, infrastructure building has become so politicised that some private-sector contractors wonder if it is worth putting their hands up for concessions.
India has always counted on domestic demand to keep its economy buoyant. It took pride in the fact that it did not rely only on export-driven growth as the less balanced nations of Japan and its neighbours have done. But today, earlier bets on the continued growth of domestic demand in India look too optimistic.
In recent years, for example, several traditional, family-owned jewellery companies, such as Gitanjali Gems and TBZ have shaken up their business models. They expanded, moved upmarket, hired designers to come up with bold new styles using more expensive jewels, and listed their shares.
These moves were an expression of confidence that India’s middle class would continue to swell and this growing wealth and conspicuous consumption would support such ambitious plans. “But today the peak in gold sales has passed,” said Shrikant Zaveri, chairman of Mumbai-based TBZ.
Today, far from achieving double-digit growth as many analysts expected a few short years ago, GDP growth has slowed. Even the government has slashed its estimates from 7.6 per cent to 5.7-5.9 per cent for the fiscal year to March. With hindsight, this difficult period may be regarded as one of transition. India has outgrown its fragmented, small-scale agricultural and manufacturing model. It is also in the process of repudiating its period of crony capitalism, whereby politically connected businessmen received concessions and access to resources from the government in sweetheart deals. Beneath the so-called bad billionaires, a new generation of entrepreneurs is springing up in regional centres such as Ahmedabad, setting up companies that do everything from producing local language films to developing smartphone applications to digital education and healthcare start-ups.
It is true that third-quarter gold sales were slightly better than the first half of the year. But the last thing the depressed jewellers needed was bad news from the astrologers. India’s semi-annual wedding seasons account for the majority of jewellery sales. Yet this year, for the first of the two seasons, astrologers deemed only seven days auspicious for marriage ceremonies, compared with 28 for the year-ago period. Some jewellers, though, are hopeful that next year will be better since the astrologers say there will be many more auspicious days in 2013. Unfortunately the glittering optimism of the astrologers is not matched by the more sombre outlook of many analysts.
Meanwhile, sales of gold jewellery have been falling in India, depressed by the high price of the precious metal, especially in local currency terms, by gloomy consumer sentiment and even by the pronouncements of the country’s numerous astrologers.What skateshoes are you meant for?
High quality global journalism requires investment. Please share this article with others using the link below, do not cut & paste the article.Our discount watches shop has replicawatches that has the great collections of the quality copies. See our Ts&Cs and Copyright Policy for more detail. Email ftsales.
Nowhere else does gold play as important a role in the macro economy as in India, where it also provides valuable insights into consumer sentiment.Each designer authentichandbag that we receive is inspected by our authenticity team before it is sold. Last year, India spent $56bn on gold imports, worsening its current account deficit and putting downward pressure on the rupee, which in turn fed further demand for gold. Now that demand has become weaker. That is not because consumers have regained their faith in their currency,More information about guccimenshoes including release dates, but rather because gold has become too expensive in rupee terms, jewellers say.Superb range of castellicycling Windproof Jackets products at Wiggle,
Symptoms of malaise are everywhere in India today, in every aspect of the economy, including investment, production and consumption. This nation of almost 1.3bn people should have a natural competitive advantage in making highly engineered goods as well as in information technology and other services. Yet manufacturing remains stunted, stymied by the high cost of capital, the high price of energy and still woeful infrastructure.
Alliance Tire originally set up a plant in Tamil Nadu, also in the south of India, in 2007 because the state had a surfeit of power. Today, faced with frequent electricity outages, its founder Yogesh Kumar Mahansaria has himself entered the energy business, building a generation facility to keep his tyre factory running.
Mr Mahansaria exports almost all the tyres he makes. But he is a puzzling exception to the general rule that most Indian manufacturers lack scale and significant competitive advantages. At the same time, infrastructure building has become so politicised that some private-sector contractors wonder if it is worth putting their hands up for concessions.
India has always counted on domestic demand to keep its economy buoyant. It took pride in the fact that it did not rely only on export-driven growth as the less balanced nations of Japan and its neighbours have done. But today, earlier bets on the continued growth of domestic demand in India look too optimistic.
In recent years, for example, several traditional, family-owned jewellery companies, such as Gitanjali Gems and TBZ have shaken up their business models. They expanded, moved upmarket, hired designers to come up with bold new styles using more expensive jewels, and listed their shares.
These moves were an expression of confidence that India’s middle class would continue to swell and this growing wealth and conspicuous consumption would support such ambitious plans. “But today the peak in gold sales has passed,” said Shrikant Zaveri, chairman of Mumbai-based TBZ.
Today, far from achieving double-digit growth as many analysts expected a few short years ago, GDP growth has slowed. Even the government has slashed its estimates from 7.6 per cent to 5.7-5.9 per cent for the fiscal year to March. With hindsight, this difficult period may be regarded as one of transition. India has outgrown its fragmented, small-scale agricultural and manufacturing model. It is also in the process of repudiating its period of crony capitalism, whereby politically connected businessmen received concessions and access to resources from the government in sweetheart deals. Beneath the so-called bad billionaires, a new generation of entrepreneurs is springing up in regional centres such as Ahmedabad, setting up companies that do everything from producing local language films to developing smartphone applications to digital education and healthcare start-ups.
It is true that third-quarter gold sales were slightly better than the first half of the year. But the last thing the depressed jewellers needed was bad news from the astrologers. India’s semi-annual wedding seasons account for the majority of jewellery sales. Yet this year, for the first of the two seasons, astrologers deemed only seven days auspicious for marriage ceremonies, compared with 28 for the year-ago period. Some jewellers, though, are hopeful that next year will be better since the astrologers say there will be many more auspicious days in 2013. Unfortunately the glittering optimism of the astrologers is not matched by the more sombre outlook of many analysts.
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