20.04.2008

• On forward trading
• Just a week before the Abhijit Sen committee report on forward trading is scheduled to be submitted, deputy chairman of Planning Commission Montek Singh Ahluwalia said that India can’t ignore the active commodity market in China.
• But the Left says that forward trading doesn’t help farmers.
• Slowdown in M&A (Mergers & Acquisition) activity
• With a string of deals falling through in the past few months, dealmakers at India Inc seem to be cooling their heels — at least for the time being.
• Compared to the corresponding period last year, M&As have dried up and their announced valuation in the first three months of this year coming down by almost 71%. And though PE deals have hit the road again after an initial stutter, the buzz in investment banking circles is depicting a different story - that of deals not going through.
• On our PDS effort
• India runs the world’s biggest food aid program, an $8.4 billion effort that shoves 15 million tonnes of subsidised wheat and rice a year to hundreds of millions of people.
• How many essential commodities are there?
• The government classifies 30 items as essential commodities, of which 27 are included in the WPI (Wholesale Price Index) computation. They have a combined weight of 17.8% in the WPI.
• What is a nuclear bank that is being proposed by India?
• Even as the nuclear establishment expressed frustration at the nuclear deal getting stuck in politics, foreign secretary Shiv Shankar Menon hoped that the deal would be concluded soon and floated the idea of India being home to an international nuclear bank.
• The idea of an international nuclear bank was floated by International Atomic Energy Agency Director General Mohammad ElBaradei last year and has been widely debated among various countries. Due to the complexities involved, this is an idea that has not moved forward since last year.
• The idea of the fuel bank is to provide enriched nuclear fuel to countries that don’t have access to reprocessing technology. Countries with reprocessing technology will keep the bank stocked with enriched Uranium.
• The interest for India in the bank is that it would be one of the countries that could source fuel from the bank for its atomic reactors.
• Ground handling operations at our smaller airports
• As per the existing ground handling policy, which becomes effective from January 2009, only three agencies will be allowed to take up ground handling services in our domestic airports.
• Four international ground handlers – Menzies, Swissport, SATS and Dnata – have submitted tenders for handling ground work at the 26 non-metro airports in the country.
• Ever wondered what is Nehru’s take on the reservation system?
• From a piece written by Raghu Krishnan in today’s ET, I excerpt below for you:
• “if we go in for reservations on a communal or caste basis, we swamp the bright and able people and remain second-rate or third-rate. Let’s help the backward groups by all means but never at the cost of efficiency. How are we going to build our public sector or any sector with second-rate people? I want my country to be first-class in every thing. The moment we encourage second-rate we are lost. That way lies not only folly but disaster.”
• Can even a Nehru have the guts to say these words in the present day quota-centered politics? I am sure even Jawaharlal Nehru would have shied away from saying these words in public in today’s India.
• On taming the inflation conundrum
• If you have ever been looking for a single piece to inform you about inflation, today’s piece by Nidhi Nath Srinivas is a very good one on the subject.
• Take a look at it here.
• It is a very important subject in the present context. Do read it at least once.
• Oil hits a record $117 per barrel!!!
• The reasons for the spike include:
• An attack on a pipeline in Nigeria.
• A weak dollar and supply worries.
• Russian oil production dropped for the first time in a decade.
• Lower refinery utilization in America.
• India VIX
• We have been noting about VIX for quite some time in our blog. Today’s piece by Aman dhall and Dheeraj Tiwari is a good one which gives a lowdown on the concept in layman’s terms. Worth a read.
• Do so here.
• For the impatient – the index reflects investors’ best prediction of near-term market volatility.
• VIX value provides the expected fluctuation perceived by the market over the next 30 calendar days. It is calculated from the near and mid-month options bid and offer prices of Nifty 50 index options. The calculated figure denotes the expected volatility in the near term.
• The first such volatility index, VIX, was created by CBOE (Chicago Board Options Exchange) in 1993, tracking the S&P 500 (Standard & Poor) and was based on Black Scholes option pricing model.