The Banking Business…Note Quote

Why is lending indispensable to banking? This not-so new question has garnered a lot of steam, especially in the wake of 2007-08 crisis. In India, however, this question has become quite a staple of CSOs purportedly carrying out research and analysis in what has, albeit wrongly, begun to be considered offshoots of neoliberal policies of capitalism favoring cronyism on one hand, and marginalizing priority sector focus by nationalized banks on the other. Though, it is a bit far-fetched to call this analysis mushrooming on artificially-tilled grounds, it nevertheless isn’t justified for the leaps such analyses assume don’t exist. The purpose of this piece is precisely to demystify and be a correctional to such erroneous thoughts feeding activism. 

The idea is to launch from the importance of lending practices to banking, and why if such practices weren’t the norm, banking as a business would falter. Monetary and financial systems are creations of double entry-accounting, in that, when banks lend, the process is a creation of a matrix/(ces) of new assets and new liabilities. Monetary system is a counterfactual, which is a bookkeeping mechanism for the intermediation of real economic activity giving a semblance of reality to finance capitalism in substance and form. Let us say, a bank A lends to a borrower. By this process, a new asset and a new liability is created for A, in that, there is a debit under bank assets, and a simultaneous credit on the borrower’s account. These accounting entries enhance bank’s and borrower’s  respective categories, making it operationally different from opening bank accounts marked by deposits. The bank now has an asset equal to the amount of the loan and a liability equal to the deposit. Put a bit more differently, bank A writes a cheque or draft for the borrower, thus debiting the borrower’s loan account and crediting a payment liability account. Now, this borrower decides to deposit this cheque/draft at a different bank B, which sees the balance sheet of B grow by the same amount, with a payment due asset and a deposit liability. This is what is a bit complicated and referred to as matrix/(ces) at the beginning of this paragraph. The obvious complication is due to a duplication of balance sheet across the banks A and B, which clearly stands in need of urgent resolution. This duplication is categorized under the accounting principle of ‘Float’, and is the primary requisite for resolving duplicity. Float is the amount of time it takes for money to move from one account to another. The time period is significant because it’s as if the funds are in two places at once. The money is still in the cheque writer’s account, and the cheque recipient may have deposited funds to their bank as well. The resolution is reached when the bank B clears the cheque/draft and receives a reserve balance credit in exchange, at which point the bank A sheds both reserve balances and its payment liability. Now, what has happened is that the systemic balance sheet has grown by the amount of the original loan and deposit, even if these are domiciles in two different banks A and B. In other words, B’s balance sheet has an increased deposits and reserves, while A’s balance sheet temporarily unchanged due to loan issued offset reserves decline. It needs to be noted that here a reserve requirement is created in addition to a capital requirement, the former with the creation of a deposit, while the latter with the creation of a loan, implying that loans create capital requirement, whereas deposits create reserve requirement.  Pari Passu, bank A will seek to borrow new funding from money markets and bank B could lend funds into these markets. This is a natural reaction to the fluctuating reserve distribution created at banks A and B. This course of normalization of reserve fluctuations is a basic function of commercial bank reserve management. Though, this is a typical case involving just two banks, a meshwork of different banks, their counterparties, are involved in such transactions that define present-day banking scenario, thus highlighting complexity referred to earlier. 

Now, there is something called the Cash Reserve Ratio (CRR), whereby banks in India (and elsewhere as well) are required to hold a certain proportion of their deposits in the form of cash. However, these banks don’t hold these as cash with themselves for they deposit such cash (also known as currency chests) with the Reserve Bank of India (RBI). For example, if the bank’s deposits increase by Rs. 100, and if the CRR is 4% (this is the present CRR stipulated by the RBI), then the banks will have to hold Rs. 4 with the RBI, and the bank will be able to use only Rs. 96 for investments and lending, or credit purpose. Therefore, higher the CRR, lower is the amount that banks will be able to use for lending and investment. CRR is a tool used by the RBI to control liquidity in the banking system. Now, if the bank A lends out Rs. 100, it incurs a reserve requirement of Rs. 4, or in other words, for every Rs. 100 loan, there is a simultaneous reserve requirement of Rs. 4 created in the form of reserve liability. But, there is a further ingredient to this banking complexity in the form of Tier-1 and Tier-2 capital as laid down by BASEL Accords, to which India is a signatory. Under the accord, bank’s capital consists of tier-1 and tier-2 capital, where tier-1 is bank’s core capital, while tier-2 is supplementary, and the sum of these two is bank’s total capital. This is a crucial component and is considered highly significant by regulators (like the RBI, for instance), for the capital ratio is used to determine and rank bank’s capital adequacy. tier-1 capital consists of shareholders’ equity and retained earnings, and gives a measure of when the bank must absorb losses without ceasing business operations. BASEL-3 has capped the minimum tier-1 capital ratio at 6%, which is calculated by dividing bank’s tier-1 capital by its total risk-based assets. Tier-2 capital includes revaluation reserves, hybrid capital instruments and subordinated term debt, general loan-loss revenues, and undisclosed reserves. tier-2 capital is supplementary since it is less reliable than tier-1 capital. According to BASEL-3, the minimum total capital ratio is 8%, which indicates the minimum tier-2 capital ratio at 2%, as opposed to 6% for the tier-1 capital ratio. Going by these norms, a well capitalized bank in India must have a 8% combined tier-1 and tier-2 capital ratio, meaning that for every Rs. 100 bank loan, a simultaneous regulatory capital liability of Rs. 8 of tier-1/tier-2 is generated. Further, if a Rs. 100 loan has created a Rs. 100 deposit, it has actually created an asset of Rs. 100 for the bank, while at the same time a liability of Rs. 112, which is the sum of deposits and required reserves and capital. On the face of it, this looks like a losing deal for the bank. But, there is more than meets the eye here. 

Assume bank A lends Mr. Amit Modi Rs. 100, by crediting Mr. Modi’s deposit account held at A with Rs. 100. Two new liabilities are immediately created that need urgent addressing, viz. reserve and capital requirement. One way to raise Rs. 8 of required capital, bank A sells shares, or raise equity-like debt or retain earnings. The other way is to attach an origination fee of 10% (sorry for the excessively high figure here, but for sake of brevity, let’s keep it at 10%). This 10% origination fee helps maintain retained earnings and assist satisfying capital requirements. Now, what is happening here might look unique, but is the key to any banking business of lending, i.e. the bank A is meeting its capital requirement by discounting a deposit it created of its own loan, and thereby reducing its liability without actually reducing its asset. To put it differently, bank A extracts a 10% fee from Rs. 100 it loans, thus depositing an actual sum of only Rs. 90. With this, A’s reserve requirement decrease by Rs. 3.6 (remember 4% is the CRR). This in turn means that the loan of Rs. 100 made by A actually creates liabilities worth Rs. Rs. 108.4 (4-3.6 = 0.4 + 8). The RBI, which imposes the reserve requirement will follow up new deposit creation with a systemic injection sufficient to accommodate the requirement of bank B that has issued the deposit. And this new requirement is what is termed the targeted asset for the bank. It will fund this asset in the normal course of its asset-liability management process, just as it would any other asset. At the margin, the bank actually has to compete for funding that will draw new reserve balances into its position with the RBI. This action of course is commingled with numerous other such transactions that occur in the normal course of reserve management. The sequence includes a time lag between the creation of the deposit and the activation of the corresponding reserve requirement against that deposit. A bank in theory can temporarily be at rest in terms of balance sheet growth, and still be experiencing continuous shifting in the mix of asset and liability types, including shifting of deposits. Part of this deposit shifting is inherent in a private sector banking system that fosters competition for deposit funding. The birth of a demand deposit in particular is separate from retaining it through competition. Moreover, the fork in the road that was taken in order to construct a private sector banking system implies that the RBI is not a mere slush fund that provides unlimited funding to the banking system.  

The originating accounting entries in the above case are simple, a loan asset and a deposit liability. But this is only the start of the story. Commercial bank ‘asset-liability management’ functions oversee the comprehensive flow of funds in and out of individual banks. They control exposure to the basic banking risks of liquidity and interest rate sensitivity. Somewhat separately, but still connected within an overarching risk management framework, banks manage credit risk by linking line lending functions directly to the process of internal risk assessment and capital allocation. Banks require capital, especially equity capital, to take risk, and to take credit risk in particular. Interest rate risk and interest margin management are critical aspects of bank asset-liability management. The asset-liability management function provides pricing guidance for deposit products and related funding costs for lending operations. This function helps coordinate the operations of the left and the right hand sides of the balance sheet. For example, a central bank interest rate change becomes a cost of funds signal that transmits to commercial bank balance sheets as a marginal pricing influence. The asset-liability management function is the commercial bank coordination function for this transmission process, as the pricing signal ripples out to various balance sheet categories. Loan and deposit pricing is directly affected because the cost of funds that anchors all pricing in finance has been changed. In other cases, a change in the term structure of market interest rates requires similar coordination of commercial bank pricing implications. And this reset in pricing has implications for commercial bank approaches to strategies and targets for the compositional mix of assets and liabilities. The life of deposits is more dynamic than their birth or death. Deposits move around the banking system as banks compete to retain or attract them. Deposits also change form. Demand deposits can convert to term deposits, as banks seek a supply of longer duration funding for asset-liability matching purposes. And they can convert to new debt or equity securities issued by a particular bank, as buyers of these instruments draw down their deposits to pay for them. All of these changes happen across different banks, which can lead to temporary imbalances in the nominal matching of assets and liabilities, which in turn requires active management of the reserve account level, with appropriate liquidity management responses through money market operations in the short term, or longer term strategic adjustment in approaches to loan and deposit market share. The key idea here is that banks compete for deposits that currently exist in the system, including deposits that can be withdrawn on demand, or at maturity in the case of term deposits. And this competition extends more comprehensively to other liability forms such as debt, as well as to the asset side of the balance sheet through market share strategies for various lending categories. All of this balance sheet flux occurs across different banks, and requires that individual banks actively manage their balance sheets to ensure that assets are appropriately and efficiently funded with liabilities and equity. The ultimate purpose of reserve management is not reserve positioning per se. The end goal is balance sheets are in balance. The reserve system records the effect of this balance sheet activity. And even if loan books remain temporarily unchanged, all manner of other banking system assets and liabilities may be in motion. This includes securities portfolios, deposits, debt liabilities, and the status of the common equity and retained earnings account. And of course, loan books don’t remain unchanged for very long, in which case the loan/deposit growth dynamic comes directly into play on a recurring basis. 

Commercial banks’ ability to create money is constrained by capital. When a bank creates a new loan, with an associated new deposit, the bank’s balance sheet size increases, and the proportion of the balance sheet that is made up of equity (shareholders’ funds, as opposed to customer deposits, which are debt, not equity) decreases. If the bank lends so much that its equity slice approaches zero, as happened in some banks prior to the financial crisis, even a very small fall in asset prices is enough to render it insolvent. Regulatory capital requirements are intended to ensure that banks never reach such a fragile position. In contrast, central banks’ ability to create money is constrained by the willingness of their government to back them, and the ability of that government to tax the population. In practice, most central bank money these days is asset-backed, since central banks create new money when they buy assets in open market operations or Quantitative Easing, and when they lend to banks. However, in theory a central bank could literally spirit money from thin air without asset purchases or lending to banks. This is Milton Friedman’s famous helicopter drop. The central bank would become technically insolvent as a result, but provided the government is able to tax the population, that wouldn’t matter. The ability of the government to tax the population depends on the credibility of the government and the productive capacity of the economy. Hyperinflation can occur when the supply side of the economy collapses, rendering the population unable and/or unwilling to pay taxes. It can also occur when people distrust a government and its central bank so much that they refuse to use the currency that the central bank creates. Distrust can come about because people think the government is corrupt and/or irresponsible, or because they think that the government is going to fall and the money it creates will become worthless. But nowhere in the genesis of hyperinflation does central bank insolvency feature….

 

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Transmission of Eventual Lending Rates: MCLRs. Note Quote.

Given that capital market instruments are not subject to MCLR/base rate regulations, the issuances of Commercial Paper/bonds reflect the current interest rates as banks are able to buy/subscribe new deposits reflecting extant interest rates, making transmission instantaneous. 

The fundamental challenge we have here is that there is no true floating rate liability structure for banks. One can argue that banks themselves will have to develop the floating rate deposit product, but customer response, given the complexity and uncertainty for the depositor, has been at best lukewarm. In an environment where the banking system is fighting multiple battles – asset quality, weak growth, challenges on transition to Ind AS accounting practice, rapid digitization leading to new competition from non-bank players, vulnerability in the legacy IT systems –  creating a mindset for floating rate deposits hardly appears to be a priority. 

In this context, it is clear that Marginal Costs of Funds Based Lending Rates (MCLRs) have largely come down in line with policy rates. MCLR is built on four components – marginal cost of funds, negative carry on account of cash reserve ratio (CRR), operating costs and tenor premium. Marginal cost of funds is the marginal cost of borrowing and return on net worth for banks. The operating cost includes cost of providing the loan product including cost of raising funds. Tenor premium arises from loan commitments with longer tenors. Some data indicate that while MCLR has indeed tracked policy rates (especially post-demonetization), as liquidity has been abundant, average leading rates have not yet reflected the fall in MCLR rates. This is simply because MCLR reset happens over a period of time depending on the benchmark MCLR used for sanctioning the loans. 

Before jumping the gun that this is a flaw in the structure as the benefit of lower interest rates is significantly lagging, the benefit will be to the borrower when the interest cycle turns. In fact, given that MCLR benchmarks vary from one month to one year, unlike base rate, banks are in a better situation to cut MCLRs, as not the entire book resets immediately. The stakeholders must therefore want for a few more months before concluding on the effectiveness of transmission on eventual lending rates. 

Global Significance of Chinese Investments. My Deliberations in Mumbai (04/03/2018)

Legends:

What are fitted values in statistics?

The values for an output variable that have been predicted by a model fitted to a set of data. a statistical is generally an equation, the graph of which includes or approximates a majority of data points in a given data set. Fitted values are generated by extending the model of past known data points in order to predict unknown values. These are also called predicted values.

What are outliers in statistics?

These are observation points that are distant from other observations and may arise due to variability in the measurement  or it may indicate experimental errors. These may also arise due to heavy tailed distribution.

What is LBS (Locational Banking statistics)?

The locational banking statistics gather quarterly data on international financial claims and liabilities of bank offices in the reporting countries. Total positions are broken down by currency, by sector (bank and non-bank), by country of residence of the counterparty, and by nationality of reporting banks. Both domestically-owned and foreign-owned banking offices in the reporting countries record their positions on a gross (unconsolidated) basis, including those vis-à-vis own affiliates in other countries. This is consistent with the residency principle of national accounts, balance of payments and external debt statistics.

What is CEIC?

Census and Economic Information Centre

What are spillover effects?

These refer to the impact that seemingly unrelated events in one nation can have on the economies of other nations. since 2009, China has emerged a major source of spillover effects. This is because Chinese manufacturers have driven much of the global commodity demand growth since 2000. With China now being the second largest economy in the world, the number of countries that experience spillover effects from a Chinese slowdown is significant. China slowing down has a palpable impact on worldwide trade in metals, energy, grains and other commodities.

How does China deal with its Non-Performing Assets?

China adopted a four-point strategy to address the problems. The first was to reduce risks by strengthening banks and spearheading reforms of the state-owned enterprises (SOEs) by reducing their level of debt. The Chinese ensured that the nationalized banks were strengthened by raising disclosure standards across the board.

The second important measure was enacting laws that allowed the creation of asset management companies, equity participation and most importantly, asset-based securitization. The “securitization” approach is being taken by the Chinese to handle even their current NPA issue and is reportedly being piloted by a handful of large banks with specific emphasis on domestic investors. According to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), this is a prudent and preferred strategy since it gets assets off the balance sheets quickly and allows banks to receive cash which could be used for lending.

The third key measure that the Chinese took was to ensure that the government had the financial loss of debt “discounted” and debt equity swaps were allowed in case a growth opportunity existed. The term “debt-equity swap” (or “debt-equity conversion”) means the conversion of a heavily indebted or financially distressed company’s debt into equity or the acquisition by a company’s creditors of shares in that company paid for by the value of their loans to the company. Or, to put it more simply, debt-equity swaps transfer bank loans from the liabilities section of company balance sheets to common stock or additional paid-in capital in the shareholders’ equity section.

Let us imagine a company, as on the left-hand side of the below figure, with assets of 500, bank loans of 300, miscellaneous debt of 200, common stock of 50 and a carry-forward loss of 50. By converting 100 of its debt into equity (transferring 50 to common stock and 50 to additional paid-in capital), thereby improving the balance sheet position and depleting additional paid-in capital (or using the net income from the following year), as on the right-hand side of the figure, the company escapes insolvency. The former creditors become shareholders, suddenly acquiring 50% of the voting shares and control of the company.

The first benefit that results from this is the improvement in the company’s finances produced by the reduction in debt. The second benefit (from the change in control) is that the creditors become committed to reorganizing the company, and the scope for moral hazard by the management is limited. Another benefit is one peculiar to equity: a return (i.e., repayment) in the form of an increase in enterprise value in the future. In other words, the fact that the creditors stand to make a return on their original investment if the reorganization is successful and the value of the business rises means that, like the debtor company, they have more to gain from this than from simply writing off their loans. If the reorganization is not successful, the equity may, of course, prove worthless.

The fourth measure they took was producing incentives like tax breaks, exemption from administrative fees and transparent evaluations norms. These strategic measures ensured the Chinese were on top of the NPA issue in the early 2000s, when it was far larger than it is today. The noteworthy thing is that they were indeed successful in reducing NPAs. How is this relevant to India and how can we address the NPA issue more effectively?

For now, capital controls and the paying down of foreign currency loans imply that there are few channels through which a foreign-induced debt sell-off could trigger a collapse in asset prices. Despite concerns in 2016 over capital outflow, China’s foreign exchange reserves have stabilised.

But there is a long-term cost. China is now more vulnerable to capital outflow. Errors and omissions on its national accounts remain large, suggesting persistent unrecorded capital outflows. This loss of capital should act as a salutary reminder to those who believe that China can take the lead on globalisation or provide the investment or currency business to fuel things like a post-Brexit economy.

The Chinese government’s focus on debt management will mean tighter controls on speculative international investments. It will also provide a stern test of China’s centrally planned financial system for the foreseeable future.

Global Significance of Chinese investments

Indecent Bazaars. Thought of the Day 113.0

Peripheral markets may be defined as markets which generate only a small proportion of their financial inflows from local business and investors, but which attract the interest of ‘global’ investors. Emerging markets and markets for financial exotica such as financial derivatives are examples of such peripheral markets. Because emerging markets are largely dependent upon attracting international funds in order to generate increases in securities prices and capital gains which will attract further funds, they are particularly good examples of the principles of Ponzi finance at work in securities markets.

A common characteristic feature of peripheral markets is that they have no history of returns to financial investment on the scale on which finance is drawn to those markets in a time of capital market inflation. Such returns in the future have to be inferred on the basis of conjecture and fragmentary information. Investment decisions are therefore more dependent on sentiment, rather than reason. Any optimism is quickly justified by the rapid increase in asset prices in response to even a modest excess net inflow of money into such a market.

Emerging markets illustrate this very clearly. Such markets exist in developing and semi-industrialized countries with relatively undeveloped pensions and insurance institutions, principally because only a small proportion of households earn enough to be able to put aside long-term savings. The first fund manager comes upon such a market in the conviction that a change of government or government policy, or some temporary change in commodity prices, has opened a cornucopia of profitable opportunities and therefore warrants the dismissal of a history of economic, financial and political instability. If he or she is able with buying and enthusiasm to attract other speculators and fund managers to enter the market, they may drive up asset prices and make the largest capital gains. The second and third fund managers to buy into that market also make capital gains. The emulatory competition of trading on reputation while competing for returns makes international investment managers especially prone to this kind of ‘herd’ investment.

For a while such capital inflows into the market make everyone happy: international fund managers are able to show good returns from the funds in their care; finance theorists can reassure themselves that greater financial risks are compensated by higher returns; the government of the country in which the emerging market is located can sell its bonds and public sector enterprises to willing foreign investors and use the proceeds to balance its budget and repay its debts; the watchdogs of financial prudence in the International Monetary Fund can hail the revival of finance, the government’s commitment to private enterprise and apparent fiscal responsibility; state enterprises, hitherto stagnating because of under-investment by over-indebted governments, suddenly find themselves in the private sector commanding seemingly limitless opportunities for raising finance; the country’s currency after years of depreciation acquires a gilt-edged stability as dollars (the principal currency of international investment) flow in to be exchanged for local currency with which to buy local securities; the central bank accumulates dollars in exchange for the local currency that it issues to enable foreign investors to invest in the local markets and, with larger reserves, secures a new ease in managing its foreign liabilities; the indigenous middle and professional classes who buy financial and property (real estate) assets in time for the boom are enriched and for once cease their perennial grumbling at the sordid reality of life in a poor country. In this conjuncture the most banal shibboleths of enterprise and economic progress under capitalism appear like the very essence of worldly wisdom.

Only in such a situation of capital market inflation are the supposed benefits of foreign direct investment realized. Such investment by multinational companies is widely held to improve the ‘quality’ or productivity of local labour, management and technical know-how in less developed countries, whose technology and organization of labour lags behind that of the more industrialized countries. But only the most doltish and ignorant peasant would not have his or her productivity increased by being set to work with a machine of relatively recent vintage under the guidance of a manager familiar with that machine and the kind of work organization that it requires. It is more doubtful whether the initial increase in productivity can be realized without a corresponding increase in the export market (developing countries have relatively small home markets). It is even more doubtful if the productivity increase can be repeated without the replacement of the machinery by even newer machinery.

The favourable conjuncture in the capital markets of developing countries can be even more temporary. There are limits on the extent to which even private sector companies may take on financial liabilities and privatization is merely a system for transferring such liabilities from the government to the private sector without increasing the financial resources of the companies privatized. But to sustain capital gains in the emerging stock market, additional funds have to continue to flow in buying new liabilities of the government or the private sector, or buying out local investors. When new securities cease to attract international fund managers, the inflow stops. Sometimes this happens when the government privatization drive pauses, because the government runs out of attractive state enterprises or there are political and procedural difficulties in selling them. A fall in the proceeds from privatization may reveal the government’s underlying fiscal deficit, causing the pundits of international finance to sense the odour of financial unsoundness. More commonly rising imports and general price inflation, due to the economic boom set off by the inflow of foreign funds, arouse just such an odour in the noses of those pundits. Such financial soundness is a subjective view. Even if nothing is wrong in the country concerned, the prospective capital gain and yield in some other market need only rise above the expected inflation and yield of the country, to cause a capital outflow which will usually be justified in retrospect by an appeal to perceived, if not actual, financial disequilibrium.

Ponzi financial structures are characterized by ephemeral liquidity. At the time when money is coming into the markets they appear to be just the neo-classical ideal of market perfection, with lots of buyers and sellers scrambling for bargains and arbitrage profits. At the moment when disinvestment takes hold the true nature of peripheral markets and their ephemeral liquidity is revealed as trades which previously sped through in the frantic paper chase for profits are now frustrated. This too is particularly apparent in emerging markets. In order to sell, a buyer is necessary. If the majority of investors in a market also wish to sell, then sales cannot be executed for want of a buyer and the apparently perfect market liquidity dries up. The crash of the emerging stock market is followed by the fall in the exchange value of the local currency. Those international investors that succeeded in selling now have local currency which has to be converted into dollars if the proceeds of the sale are to be repatriated, or invested elsewhere. Exchange through the local banking system may now be frustrated if it has inadequate dollar reserves: a strong possibility if the central bank has been using dollars to service foreign debts. In spite of all the reassurance that this time it will be different because capital inflows are secured on financial instruments issued by the private sector, international investors are at this point as much at the mercy of the central bank and the government of an emerging market as international banks were at the height of the sovereign debt crisis. Moreover, the greater the success of the peripheral market in attracting funds, and hence the greater the boom in prices in that market, the greater is the desired outflow when it comes. With the fall in liquidity of financial markets in developing countries comes a fall in the liquidity of foreign direct investment, making it difficult to secure appropriate local financial support or repatriate profits.

Another factor which contributes to the fragility of peripheral markets is the opaqueness of financial accounting in them, in the sense that however precise and discriminating may be the financial accounting conventions, rules and reporting, they do not provide accurate indicators of the financial prospects of particular investments. In emerging markets this is commonly supposed to be because they lack the accounting regulations and expertise which supports the sophisticated integrated financial markets of the industrialized countries. In those industrialized countries, where accounting procedures are supposed to be much more transparent, peripheral markets such as venture capital and financial futures still suffer from accounting inadequacies because financial innovation introduces liabilities that have no history and which are not included in conventional accounts (notably the so-called ‘off-balance sheet’ liabilities). More important than these gaps in financial reporting is the volatility of profits from financial investment in such peripheral markets, and the absence of any stable relationship between profits from trading in their instruments and the previous history of those instruments or the financial performance of the company issuing them. Thus, even where financial records are comprehensive, accurate and revealed, they are a poor indicator of prospective returns from investments in the securities of peripheral markets.

With more than usually unreliable financial data, trading in those markets is much more based on reputation than on any systematic financial analysis: the second and third investor in such a market is attracted by the reputation of the first and subsequently the second investor. Because of the direct connection between financial inflows and values in securities markets, the more trading takes place on the basis of reputation the less of a guide to prospective returns is afforded by financial analysis. Peripheral markets are therefore much more prone to ‘ramping’ than other markets.

Why would such a crisis of withdrawal not occur, at least not on such a scale, in the more locally integrated capital markets of the advanced industrialised countries? First of all, integrated capital markets such as those of the UK, and the US are the domestic base for international investors. In periods of financial turbulence, they are more likely to have funds repatriated to them than to have funds taken out of them. Second, institutional investors tend to be more responsive to pressure to be ‘responsible investors’ in their home countries. In large measure this is because home securities make up the vast majority of investment fund portfolios. Ultimately, investment institutions will use their liquidity to protect the markets in which most of their portfolio is based. Finally, the locally integrated markets of the advanced industrialized countries have investing institutions with far greater wealth than the developing or semi-industrialized countries. Those markets are home for the pension funds which dominate the world markets. Among their wealth are deposits and other liquid assets which may be easily converted to support a stock market by buying securities. The poorer countries of the world have even poorer pension funds, which could not support their markets against an outflow due to portfolio switches by international investors.

Thus integrated markets are more ‘secure’ in that they are less prone to collapse than emerging or, more generally, peripheral markets. But precisely because of the large amount of trade already concentrated in the integrated markets, prices in them are much less likely to respond to investment fund inflows from abroad. Pension and insurance fund practice is to extrapolate those capital gains into the future for the purposes of determining the solvency of those funds. However, those gains were obtained because of a combination of inflation, the increased scope of funded pensions and the flight of funds from peripheral markets.

Haircuts and Collaterals.

In a repo-style securities financing transaction, the repo buyer or lender is exposed to the borrower’s default risk for the whole duration with a market contingent exposure, framed on a short window for default settlement. A margin period of risk (MPR) is a time period starting from the last date when margin is met to the date when the defaulting counterparty is closed out with completion of collateral asset disposal. MPR could cover a number of events or processes, including collateral valuation, margin calculation, margin call, valuation dispute and resolution, default notification and default grace period, and finally time to sell collateral to recover the lent principal and accrued interest. If the sales proceeds are not sufficient, the deficiency could be made a claim to the borrower’s estate, unless the repo is non-recourse. The lender’s exposure in a repo during the MPR is simply principal plus accrued and unpaid interest. Since the accrued and unpaid interest is usually margined at cash, repo exposure in the MPR is flat.

A flat exposure could apply to OTC derivatives as well. For an OTC netting, the mark-to-market of the derivatives could fluctuate as its underlying prices move. The derivatives exposure is formally set on the early termination date which could be days behind the point of default. The surviving counterparty, however, could have delta hedged against market factors following the default so that the derivative exposure remains a more manageable gamma exposure. For developing a collateral haircut model, what is generally assumed is a constant exposure during the MPR.

The primary driver of haircuts is asset volatility. Market liquidity risk is another significant one, as liquidation of the collateral assets might negatively impact the market, if the collateral portfolio is illiquid, large, or concentrated in certain asset sectors or classes. Market prices could be depressed, bid/ask spreads could widen, and some assets might have to be sold at a steep discount. This is particularly pronounced with private securitization and lower grade corporates, which trade infrequently and often rely on valuation services rather than actual market quotations. A haircut model therefore needs to capture liquidity risk, in addition to asset volatility.

In an idealized setting, we therefore consider a counterparty (or borrower) C’s default time at t, when the margin is last met, an MPR of u during which there is no margin posting, and the collateral assets are sold at time t+u instantaneously on the market, with a possible liquidation discount g.

Let us denote the collateral market value as B(t), exposure to the defaulting counterparty C as E(t). At time t, one share of the asset is margined properly, i.e., E(t) = (1-h)B(t), where h is a constant haircut, 1 >h ≥0. The margin agreement is assumed to have a zero minimum transfer amount. The lender would have a residual exposure (E(t) – B(t+u)(1-g))⁺, where g is a constant, 1 > g ≥ 0. Exposure to C is assumed flat after t. We can write the loss function from holding the collateral as follows,

L(t + u) = E_t(1 – B_t+u/B_t (1 – g)/(1 – h))⁺ = (1 – g)B_t(1 – B_t+u/B_t (h – g)/(1 – g))⁺ —– (1)

Conditional on default happening at time t, the above determines a one-period loss distribution driven by asset price return B(t+u)/B(t). For repos, this loss function is slightly different from the lender’s ultimate loss which would be lessened due to a claim and recovery process. In the regulatory context, haircut is viewed as a mitigation to counterparty exposure and made independent of counterparty, so recovery from the defaulting party is not considered.

Let y = (1 – B_t+u/B_t) be the price decline. If g=0, Pr(y>h) equals to Pr(L(u)>0). There is no loss, if the price decline is less or equal to h. A first rupee loss will occur only if y > h. h thus provides a cushion before a loss is incurred. Given a target rating class’s default probability p, the first loss haircut can be written as

h_p = inf{h > 0:Pr(L(u) > 0) ≤ p} —– (2)

Let VaR_q denote the VaR of holding the asset, an amount which the price decline won’t exceed, given a confidence interval of q, say 99%. In light of the adoption of the expected shortfall (ES) in BASEL IV’s new market risk capital standard, we get a chance to define haircut as ES under the q-quantile,

h_ES = ES_q = E[y|y > VaR_q]

VaR_q = inf{y₀ > 0 : Pr(y > y₀) ≤ 1 − q} —– (3)

Without the liquidity discount, h_p is the same as VaR_q. If haircuts are set to VaR_q or h_ES, the market risk capital for holding the asset for the given MPR, defined as a multiple of VaR or ES, is zero. This implies that we can define a haircut to meet a minimum economic capital (EC) requirement C₀,

h_EC = inf{h ∈ R⁺: EC[L|h] ≤ C₀} —– (4)

where EC is measured either as VaR or ES subtracted by expected loss (EL). For rating criteria employing EL based target per rating class, we could introduce one more definition of haircuts based on EL target L₀,

h_EL = inf{h ∈ R⁺: E[L|h] ≤ L₀} —– (5)

The expected loss target L₀ can be set based on EL criteria of certain designated high credit rating, whether bank internal or external. With an external rating such as Moody’s, for example, a firm can set the haircut to a level such that the expected (cumulative) loss satisfies the expected loss tolerance L₀ of some predetermined Moody’s rating target, e.g., ‘Aaa’ or ‘Aa1’. In (4) and (5), loss L’s holding period does not have to be an MPR. In fact, these two definitions apply to the general trading book credit risk capital approach where the standard horizon is one year with a 99.9% confidence interval for default risk.

Different from VaR_q, definitions h_p, h_EL, and h_EC are based on a loss distribution solely generated by collateral market risk exposure. As such, we no longer apply the usual wholesale credit risk terminology of probability of default (PD) and loss given default (LGD) to determine EL as product of PD and LGD. Here EL is directly computed from a loss distribution originated from market risk and the haircut intends to be wholesale counterparty independent. For real repo transactions where repo haircuts are known to be counterparty dependent, these definitions remain fit, when the loss distribution incorporates the counterparty credit quality.

Financial Analysis of the Blue Economy: Sagarmala’s Case in Point

Let us begin with the question. Why is infrastructure even important? Extensive and efficient infrastructure is critical for ensuring the effective functioning of the economy, as it is an important factor determining the location of economic activity and the kinds of activities or sectors that can develop in a particular economy. Well-developed infrastructure reduces the effect of distance between regions, integrating the national market and connecting it at low cost to markets in other countries and regions. In addition, the quality and extensiveness of infrastructure networks significantly impact economic growth and affect income inequalities and poverty in a variety of ways. A well- developed transport and communications infrastructure network is a prerequisite for the access of less-developed communities to core economic activities and services. Effective modes of transport, including quality roads, railroads, ports, and air transport, enable entrepreneurs to get their goods and services to market in a secure and timely manner and facilitate the movement of workers to the most suitable jobs. Economies also depend on electricity supplies that are free of interruptions and shortages so that businesses and factories can work unimpeded. Finally, a solid and extensive communications network allows for a rapid and free flow of information, which increases overall economic efficiency by helping to ensure that businesses can communicate and decisions are made by economic actors taking into account all available relevant information. There is an existing correlation between infrastructure and economic activity through which the economic effects originate in the construction phase and rise during the usage phase. The construction phase is associated with the short-term effects and are a consequence of the decisions in the public sector that could affect macroeconomic variables: GDP, employment, public deficit, inflation, among others. The public investment expands the aggregate demand, yielding a boost to the employment, production and income. The macroeconomic effects at a medium and long term, associated with the utilization phase are related to the increase of productivity in the private sector and its effects over the territory. Both influence significantly in the competitiveness degree of the economy. In conclusion, investing in infrastructure constitutes one of the main mechanisms to increase income, employment, productivity and consequently, the competitiveness of an economy. Is this so? Well, thats what the economics textbook teaches us, and thus governments all over the world turn to infrastructure development as a lubricant to maintain current economic output at best and it can also be the basis for better industry which contributes to better economic output. So far, so good, but then, so what? This is where social analysts need to be incisive in unearthing facts from fiction and this faction is what constitutes the critique of development, a critique that is engineered against a foci on GDP-led growth model.

Rewinding back to earlier this year in April, when the occasion was the inauguration of the 2nd annual meeting of New Development Bank (NDB) by the five member BRICS (Brazil-Russia-India-China-South Africa) countries in New Delhi, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley stressed that India has a huge unmet need for investment in infrastructure, estimated to the tune of Rs 43 trillion or about $646 billion over the next five years, 70% of which will be required in the power, roads and urban infrastructure sectors. He reiterated that in emerging markets and developing economies (EMDEs), the overall growth is picking up, although growth prospects diverge across countries. Further,

But there are newer challenges, most notably a possible shift towards inward-looking policy platforms and protectionism, a sharper than expected tightening in global financial conditions that could interact with balance sheet weaknesses in parts of the euro area and increased geopolitical tensions, including unpredictable economic policy of USA. Most importantly, the EMDEs need to carry out this huge investment in a sustainable manner. The established Multi-lateral Development Banks are now capital constrained, and with their over emphasis on processes, are unable to meet this financing challenge. We shall work with the NDB to develop a strong shelf of projects in specific areas such as Smart Cities, renewable energy, urban transport, including Metro Railways, clean coal technology, solid waste management and urban water supply.

This is the quote that reflects the policy-direction of the Government at the centre. Just a month prior to Jaitley’s address, it was the Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who instantiated the need for overhauling the infrastructure in a manner hitherto not conceived of, even though policies for such an overhauling were doing the rounds in the pipeline ever since he was elected to the position in May 2014. Modi emphasized that the Government would usher in a ‘Blue Revolution’ by developing India’s coastal regions and working for the welfare of fishing communities in a string of infrastructure projects. that such a declaration came in the pilgrim town of Somnath in Gujarat isn’t surprising, for the foundations of a smart city spread over an area of about 1400 acres was laid at Kandla, the port city. The figures he cited during his address were all the more staggering making one wonder about the source of resources. For instance, the smart city would provide employment to about 50000 people. The Blue Revolution would be initiated through the Government’s flagship Sagarmala Project attracting an investment to the tune of Rs. 8 lakh crore and creating industrial and tourism development along the coast line of the entire country. Not just content with such figures already, he also promised that 400 ports and fishing sites would be developed under the project, of which the state of Gujarat along would account for 40 port projects with an investment of about Rs. 45000 crore.

The Government, moreover plans to help the fishermen buy fishing boats at 50% subsidized rates, where five poor fishermen could form a cooperative and avail 50% subsidy and Rs 1 crore loan from Mudra scheme¹. Fishermen can buy a fishing trawler with cold storage facility and increase their income (emphasis mine).

One would obviously wonder at how tall are these claims? Clearly Modi and his cohorts are no fan of Schumacher’s “Small is Beautiful” due to their obsession with “Bigger is Better”. What’s even more surprising is that these reckless followers of capitalism haven’t even understood what is meant by “Creative Destruction” both macro- or micro- economically. The process of Joseph Schumpeter’s creative destruction (restructuring) permeates major aspects of macroeconomic performance, not only long-run growth but also economic fluctuations, structural adjustment and the functioning of factor markets. At the microeconomic level, restructuring is characterized by countless decisions to create and destroy production arrangements. These decisions are often complex, involving multiple parties as well as strategic and technological considerations. The efficiency of those decisions not only depends on managerial talent but also hinges on the existence of sound institutions that provide a proper transactional framework. Failure along this dimension can have severe macroeconomic consequences once it interacts with the process of creative destruction. Quite unfortunately, India is heading towards an economic mess, if such policies are to slammed onto people under circumstances when neither the macroeconomic not the microeconomic apparatuses in the country are in shape to withstand cyclonic shocks. Moreover, these promotional doctrines come at a humungous price of gross violations of human and constitutional rights of the people lending credibility once again to the warnings of Schumacher’s Small is Beautiful: A Study of Economics as if People Mattered (emphasis mine). After this pretty long sneak peek via introduction, let us turn to Blue Economy/Blue Revolution.

Blue Economy or Blue Revolution?

What exactly do these terms mean? What is the difference between the ocean economy and the blue or sustainable ocean economy? Is it simply that a sustainable ocean economy is one where the environmental risks of, and ecological damage from, economic activity are mitigated, or significantly reduced? Is it enough that future economic activity minimizes harm to the ocean, or rather, should aim to restore its health? These are pressing questions, and thus a working definition of what blue Economy is, or rather more aptly how Blue Economy is conceived the world over is an imperative.

A sustainable ocean economy emerges when economic activity is in balance with the long-term capacity of ocean ecosystems to support this activity and remain resilient and healthy.

The ocean is becoming a new focal point in the discourse on growth and sustainable development, both at national and international levels. The world is in many ways at a turning point in setting its economic priorities in the ocean. How this is done in the next years and decades, in a period when human activities in the ocean are expected to accelerate significantly, will be a key determinant of the ocean’s health and of the long- term benefits derived by all from healthy ocean ecosystems. The idea of the “blue economy” or “blue growth” has become synonymous with the “greening” of the ocean economy, and the frame by which governments, NGOs and others refer to a more sustainable ocean economy – one, broadly, where there is a better alignment between economic growth and the health of the ocean. Increasingly, national ocean development strategies reference the blue economy as a guiding principle, while policy-makers busy themselves filling in the gaps. These gaps are very considerable. Stimulating growth in the ocean economy could be comparatively straightforward; but what is not always clear is what a sustainable ocean economy should look like, and under what conditions it is most likely to develop. It is at this point where the Government and the communities dependent on oceans for life and livelihoods come to friction, and most of the time, it is the communities which find themselves at the receiving end for whenever policies pertaining to oceans and economies thereof are blue-printed, these communities seldom have a representation, or a representational voice. As could be made amply clear from the above description of what Blue Economy entails, it is the financialization of and economics of the ocean, that gets the prerogative over pretty much everything else. Indian schema on the Blue Economy is no different, and in fact it takes the theory into a derailed practice with Sagarmala Project.

What then is Blue Revolution? As has been the customary practice of the Government of India in changing names, this ‘Revolution’ too has come in to substitute ‘Economy’ in Blue Economy. This runs concomitantly with the major principles of Blue Economy in recognizing the potential and possibilities of the fisheries sector by unlocking the country’s latent potential through an integrated approach. In the words of the Government², the Blue Revolution, in its scope and reach, focuses on creating an enabling environment for an integrated and holistic development and management of fisheries for the socio economic development of the fishers and fish farmers. Thrust areas have been identified for enhancing fisheries production from 10.79 mmt (2014-15) to 15 mmt in 2020-21. Greater emphasis will be on infrastructure with an equally strong focus on management and conservation of the resources through technology transfer to increase in the income of the fishers and fish farmers. Productivity enhancement shall also be achieved through employing the best global innovations and integration of various production oriented activities such as: Production of quality fish seeds, Cost effective feed and adoption of technology etc.

The restructured Plan Scheme on Blue Revolution³ – Integrated Development and Management of Fisheries has been approved at a total central outlay of Rs 3000 crore for implementation during a period of five years (2015-16 to 2019-20)⁴. The Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare, Department of Animal Husbandry, Dairying & Fisheries has restructured the scheme by merging all the ongoing schemes under an umbrella of Blue Revolution. The restructured scheme provides focused development and management of fisheries, covering inland fisheries, aquaculture, marine fisheries including deep sea fishing, mariculture and all activities undertaken by the National Fisheries Development Board (NFDB).

The Blue Revolution scheme has the following components:

1. 1  National Fisheries Development Board (NFDB) and its activities
2. Development of Inland Fisheries and Aquaculture
3. Development of Marine Fisheries, Infrastructure and Post-Harvest Operations
4. Strengthening of Database & Geographical Information System of the Fisheries Sector
5. Institutional Arrangement for Fisheries Sector
6. Monitoring, Control and Surveillance (MCS) and other need-based Interventions
7. National Scheme of Welfare of Fishermen

One cannot fail to but notice that this schema is a gargantuan one, and the haunting accompaniment in the form of resources to bring this to effectuation would form the central theme of this paper. Though, there is enough central assistance, the question remains: where would these resources be raised/generated? Broad patterns of Central funding for new projects broadly fall under four components,

1. National Fisheries Development Board (NFDB) and its activities,
2. Development of Inland Fisheries and Aquaculture,
3. Development of Marine Fisheries, Infrastructure and Post- Harvest Operations and
4. National Scheme of Welfare of Fishermen are as below:

• 50% of the project/unit cost for general States, leaving the rest to State agencies/ organizations, corporations, federations, boards, Fishers cooperatives, private entrepreneurs, individual beneficiaries.

• 80% of the project/unit cost for North-Eastern/Hilly States leaving the rest to State agencies/Organizations, Cooperatives, individual beneficiaries etc.

• 100% for projects directly implemented by the Government of India through its institutes/organizations and Union Territories.

Projects under the remaining three components scheme namely (i) Strengthening of Database & Geographical Information System of the Fisheries Sector, (ii) Institutional Arrangement for the Fisheries Sector and (iii) Monitoring, Control and Surveillance (MCS) and other need-based interventions shall be implemented with 100% central funding. Individual beneficiaries, entrepreneurs and cooperatives/collectives of the Union Territories shall also be provided Central financial assistance at par and equal to such beneficiaries in General States. As far as the implementing agencies are concerned, such wouldn’t really be an eye-opener.

• Central Government, Central Government Institutes/Agencies, NFDB, ICAR Institutes etc.
• State Governments and Union Territories
• State Government Agencies, Organizations, Corporations, Federations, Boards, Panchayats and Local Urban Bodies
• Fishers Cooperatives/Registered Fishers Bodies

• Individual beneficiaries/fishers, Entrepreneurs, Scheduled Castes(SCs), Scheduled Tribes (STs) Groups, Women and their Co-operatives, SHG’s and Fish Farmers and miscellaneous Fishermen Bodies.

But, there is more than meets the eye here, for Blue Revolution isn’t all about fisheries, despite having some irreparable damages caused to the fisher community inhabiting the coastline for centuries. This revolution is purported to usher in industrialization, tourism and eventually growth through a criss-cross of industrial corridors, port up gradations and connectivities, raw material landing zones, coastal economic zones through what the adversaries of Blue Economy/Revolution refer to as Ocean Grabbing.⁵ In order to understand the implications of what ‘Ocean Grabbing’ refers to, one must look at it in tandem with Sagarmala Project, the flagship project of the Government of India, and a case study of instantiation of Blue Economy/Revolution. Here is where we turn to in the next section.

Sagarmala

The contours of Sagarmala Project were laid out in the April 2016 perspective plan of the Ministry of Shipping. The plan involves a four-pronged approach that includes port modernization, port connectivity and port-led industrialization. It identifies Coastal Economic Zones (CEZ) and industrial clusters to be developed around port facilities mirroring the Chinese or European port infrastructure. The ambitious programmes spread across 14 ports is aimed to make domestic manufacturing and EXIM sector more competitive.

The project falls in line with Blue Revolution’s coastal community development. By “improving and matching the skills” of coastal communities, the plan seeks to ensure “sustainable development”. The plan seeks to improve the lives of coastal communities, implying that there is no contradiction between these objectives of port-led development and that of enhancing the lives of coastal residents. This seemingly win-win agenda is also endorsed by NITI Aayog’s mapping of schemes that are to help India achieve its Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Sagarmala is one of the ways Goal 14 will be met by 2030. Goal 14 is to conserve and sustainably use oceans, seas and marine resources.

The Kutch coast of Gujarat tops the list of potential coastal economic zones (CEZs)⁶ in the 2016 perspective plan. The region is not unaccustomed to the consequences of this vision of port-centred development. The environmental impact assessment (EIA) for a large port development project in Mundra, Kutch, described the lands on which the SEZ was to be set up as “non-agricultural, waste, barren or weed infested land.” But that was far from the truth. These statements have been contested by local residents through endless administrative complaints and court cases. The litigation challenging projects in coastal Gujarat have brought up elaborate arguments regarding the complex web of valuable land uses that were blotted out to make this transformation possible.

Notwithstanding the contestations over such plans for coastal land use transformation in several regions like in Kutch, the Sagarmala plan document lays out its goals as if the coast has been an empty or unproductive space, and is now poised to be a “gateway” to growth. India’s coastline currently has about 3200 marine fishing villages. Nearly half of this population (over 1.6 million people) is engaged in active fishing and fishery-related activities. While such statistics may be quoted in the plan, the official proposal views these as mere numbers or as a population that will simply toe the line and play the role assigned to them in the plan.

Port expansions involve massive dredging into the sea that destroys large stretches of fertile fishing grounds and destabilizes jetties. Fishing associations bring out a range of concerns.⁷ Over the years there is reduced parking space for small artisanal boats, curtailed access to fishing harbours, and unpredictable fish catch. These changes keep them in a state of permanent anxiety or turn them into cheap industrial and cargo handling labour. These families also suffer the impacts of living next to mineral handling facilities and groundwater exhaustion. India has had laws to regulate environmental impacts, but these have been mostly on paper. So, the Minister for Road Transport & Highways, Shipping and Water Resources, River Development & Ganga Rejuvenation, Nitin Gadkari’s assurances that all air and water pollution norms will be met in the implementation of the Sagarmala plan may not cut any ice with coastal dwellers. Can India afford such an imagination of ‘frictionless development’? After all, we don’t yet have a Chinese model of governance.⁸ Running after the Chinese model of development⁹ is a still a dream in the corridors of power in New Delhi.

Late last year, the Minister Nitin Gadkari exuded confidence in promoting the port-led development by confidently asserting that the project would fetch 10-15 lakh crore capital investments, generate direct and indirect employment for around two crore people and provide a huge fillip to the country’s economic growth. Gadkari, when he inaugurated the Sagarmala Development Company, a unit under his ministry, and which would act as a nodal agency for the Project said Rs 8-lakh crore investment is expected as industrial investment while an additional Rs 4 lakh crore might go into port-led connectivity. It must be noted that Sagarmala Development Company¹⁰ has Rs. 1000 crore initial-authorized capital and is registered under the Companies Act, 2013. That the Government is going ahead full steam with the implementation of the Project, howsoever ill-conceived and fuzzy it might be could be gauged by the fact that a significant portion of the Project needs to be underway till the General elections of 2019. Gadkari said that projects worth Rs 1 lakh crore under the Sagarmala programme are already under various stages of implementation and by the completion of the present dispensation’s current tenure in 2019, projects worth Rs 5 lakh crore are expected to commence. He further stressed that a national perspective plan under the Sagarmala project has been prepared and projects worth Rs 8 lakh crore have been identified. That there is a lack of transparency in garnering these funds in the public domain could easily be decipherable from what Nitin Gadkari said,

I don’t have any problem with financial resources. We have already appointed an agency to help us raise funds.

What this agency is is anyone’s guess, or maybe locating the coordinates of it is as hard as finding a needle in the haystack. But, probably, here is the clue. In order to have effective mechanism at the state level for coordinating and facilitating Sagarmala related projects, the State Governments will be suggested to set up State Sagarmala Committee to be headed by Chief Minister/Minister in Charge of Ports with members from relevant Departments and agencies. The state level Committee will also take up matters on priority as decided in the National Sagarmala Apex Committee (NSAC)¹¹. At the state level, the State Maritime Boards/State Port Departments shall service the State Sagarmala Committee and also be, inter alia, responsible for coordination and implementation of individual projects, including through Special Purpose Vehicles (SPVs) (as may be necessary) and oversight. The development of each Coastal economic zone shall be done through individual projects and supporting activities that will be undertaken by the State Government, Central line Ministries and SPVs to be formed by the State Governments at the state level or by Sagarmala Development Company (SDC) and ports, as may be necessary.

Before getting into the financial ecosystem of Sagarmala, it is necessary to wrap this brief section on introducing Sagarmala with a list of the kinds of development projects envisaged in the initiative. This is also kind of summarizes the Blue Economy/ Revolution, Sagarmala Project and the hunger for infrastructural development by instances: (i) Port-led industrialization (ii) Port based urbanization (iii) Port based and coastal tourism and recreational activities (iv) Short-sea shipping coastal shipping and Inland Waterways Transportation (v) Ship building, ship repair and ship recycling (vi) Logistics parks, warehousing, maritime zones/services (vii) Integration with hinterland hubs (viii) Offshore storage, drilling platforms (ix) Specialization of ports in certain economic activities such as energy, containers, chemicals, coal, agro products, etc. (x) Offshore Renewable Energy Projects with base ports for installations (xi) Modernizing the existing ports and development of new ports. This strategy incorporates both aspects of port-led development viz. port-led direct development and port-led indirect development.

Table¹²

What does the Government want to make us believe about this ambitious Project, i.e. raison d’être for undertaking this? The growth of India’s maritime sector¹³ is constrained due to many developmental, procedural and policy related challenges namely, involvement of multiple agencies in development of infrastructure to promote industrialization, trade, tourism and transportation; presence of a dual institutional structure that has led to development of major and non-major ports as separate, unconnected entities; lack of requisite infrastructure for evacuation from major and non- major ports leading to sub-optimal transport modal mix; limited hinterland linkages that increases the cost of transportation and cargo movement; limited development of centers for manufacturing and urban and economic activities in the hinterland; low penetration of coastal and inland shipping in India, limited mechanization and procedural bottlenecks and lack of scale, deep draft and other facilities at various ports in India.

The Financial Ecosystem of Blue Revolution/Economy and Sagarmala Project

Let us begin with a shocker. In the words of Nitin Gadkari¹⁴,

With bank credit drying up for large infrastructure projects, the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government is exploring a plan to raise Rs 10 trillion from retirees and provident fund beneficiaries¹⁵.

The plan aims to raise money in tranches of Rs10,000 crore by selling 10-year bonds at a coupon of 7.25-7.75%. Each tranche will be meant for a specific project. India plans to invest as much as Rs 3.96 trillion in the current financial year to bankroll its new integrated infrastructure programme which involves building of roads, railways, waterways and airports.¹⁶ It needs to be recalled that in 2015, the Government set up the National Investment and Infrastructure fund (NIIF) to raise funds for the infrastructure sector with an initial targeted corpus of Rs 40,000 crore, of which Rs 20,000 crore was to be invested by the government. The remaining Rs 20,000 crore was to be raised from long-term international investors, including sovereign wealth funds, insurance and pension funds and endowments.

Using this option is a risky affair, not that it hasn’t been used elsewhere and for a time now, but it still retains the element of risk. The risk factor is cut if the interest rates are high, for then these retiree (pension¹⁷) and provident funds are used to buy bonds that would mature when there is a need to payout. But as interest rates fall, which is very much the case with India at the moment with fluctuations and a dip in growth post-demonetization and the banking system under stress due to NPAs, these funds are likely to face up with a dilemma. Staying heavily invested in bonds would force the Government to either set aside more cash upfront or to cut promises pertaining to retiree (pension) and provident funds. If this is the two-pronged strategy of the government on one hand, then on the other, these funds, if they are allowed to raise capital from the international markets (which, incidentally is cashing and catching up in India) radically change their investment strategies by embracing investments that produce higher returns, but are staring at more risks associated with the market. Though, this shift is in line with neoliberal market policies, this has replaced an explicit cost with a hidden one, in that the policy-makers would have to channel more capital into these funds, cut back benefits or both when the stock market crashes¹⁸ causing the asset value of these funds to decline.

A project of this magnitude is generally financed using the instrument of Project Finance. So, it becomes necessary to throw light on what exactly is entailed by the term. Project Finance is looked upon as the most viable form of financing that there is with highly mitigated levels of risks, at least, according to the financial worldlings! Although, there are difficulties and challenges/needs/necessities (in short applied/application), these need to be delineated. Additionally, a study on Project Finance leads inherently to a study on Public Private Partnerships (PPPs), another preferred mode in use in India at present. One of the fundamental trade-offs for PPPs designing is to strike a right balance between risks allocations between the public and private sector, risk allocation within the private sector and cost of funding for the PPP company. This again has potentials for points of conflict with specially designed Special Purpose Vehicles (SPVs) out there to bend inclinations due to lack of disclosure clauses that define Project Finance in the first place. The factorization of PPPs and SPVs is often channeled through what is currently gaining currency the world over: Financial Intermediaries (FIs). Let us tackle these one by one in order to know the financial ecosystem that would be helpful in tracking funds and investments flowing through into the Blue Revolution/Economy and Sagarmala Project.

A project is characterized by major productive capital investment. Now, there are some asymmetric downside risks associated with a project in addition to the usual symmetric and binary ones. These asymmetric risks are environmental risks and a possibility of creeping expropriation (due to the project). Demand, price; input/supply are symmetric risks in nature, while technological glitch and regulatory fluctuations are binary risks. All that a project is on the lookout for is a customized capital structure, and governance to minimize cash inflow/outflow volatility. Project finance aims to precisely do that. It involves a corporate sponsor investing through a non-recourse debt. It is characterized by cash flows, high debt leading to a need for additional support, bank guarantees, and letters of credit to cover greater risks during construction, implementation (commissioning as the context maybe), and at times sustainability. Now funding is routed through various sources, viz. export credits, development funds, specialized assets financing, conventional debt and equity finance. This is archetypal of how the corporate financial structure operates as far as managing risks is concerned from the point of view of future inflow of funds. It has a high concentration of equity and debt ownership, with up to three equity sponsors, syndicate of banks and financial institutions to provide for credit. Moreover, there is an extremely high level of debt with the balance of capital provided by the sponsors in the form of equity, while importantly, the debt is non- recourse to the sponsors.

The attractiveness of project finance is the ability to fund projects off balance sheet with limited or no recourse to equity investors i.e. if a project fails, the project lenders recourse is to ownership of actual project and they are unable to pursue the equity investors for debt. For this reason lenders focus on the project cash-flow as this the main sources for repaying project debt. The shareholders will invest in the SPV with a focus to minimize their equity contributions, since equity commands a higher rate of return, and thus is a more risky affair compared with a conventional commercial bank debt. Whereas, the bank lenders will always seek a comfortable level of equity from shareholders of SPV to ensure that the project sponsors are seriously committed to the project and have a vested interest in seeing the project succeed.¹⁹

The figure above delineates what Project Finance could do advantageously, but at the same time is a sneak peek into what the disadvantages are.

1. Project Finance mandates greater disclosure of information on deals and contracts, which happen to be proprietary in nature.
2. Extensive contracting restricts management decision-making, by looping it into complexities, where decisions making nodes are difficult to make.

3. Project debt is more expensive.

To turn around the disadvantages of PPPs model, an SPV is introduced. SPV is generally taken as a concessionary authority, where the concession authority is the government itself, and grants a concession to the SPV, a license granting it exclusive ownership of a facility, which, once the term for the license is over is transferred back to the government, or any other public authority. The concession forms the contract between the government and SPV and goes under the name of project agreement. Things begin to get a bit murky here, for the readers be forewarned that this applicability is becoming a commonality in the manner in which infrastructure projects are funded nowadays. Let us try and extricate the knots here.

Consider a Rs. 100 crore collection of risky loan, obligations of borrowers who have promised to repay their loans at some point in future. Let us imagine them sitting on the balance sheet of some bank XYZ, but they equally well could be securities available on the market that the Bank’s traders want to purchase and repackage for a profit. No one knows whether the borrowers will repay, so a price is put on this uncertainty by the market, where thousands of investors mull over the choice of betting on these risky loans and the certainty of risk-free government bonds. To make them indifferent to the uncertainty these loans carry, potential investors require a bribe in the form of 20% discount at face value. If none of the loans default, investors stand a chance to earn a 25% return. A good deal for investors, but a bad one for the Bank, which does not want to sell the loans for a 20% discount and thereby report a loss.

Now imagine that instead of selling the loans at their market price of Rs. 80 crore, the Bank sells them to an Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV) that pays a face value of Rs. 100 crore. Their 20% loss just disappeared. Ain’t this a miracle? But, how? The SPV has to raise Rs. 100 crore in order to buy the loans from the Bank. Lenders in SPV will only want to put Rs. 80 crore against such risky collateral. The shortfall of Rs. 20 crore will have to be made up somehow. The Bank enters here under a different garb. It puts in Rs. 20 crore as an equity investment so that the SPV has enough money now to buy the Rs. 100 crore of loans. However, there is a catch here. Lenders no longer expect to receive Rs. 100 crore, or a 25% return in compensation for putting up the Rs. 80 crore. SPV’s payout structure guarantees that the Rs. 20 crore difference between face value and market value will be absorbed by the Bank, implying treating Rs. 80 crore investment as virtually risk-free. Even though the Bank has to plough Rs. 20 crore back into the SPV as a kind of hostage against the loans going bad, from Bank’s perspective, this might be better than selling the loans at an outright Rs. 20 crore loss. This deal reconciles two opposing views, the first one being the market suspicion that those Bank assets are somehow toxic, and secondly that the Bank’s faith that its loans will eventually pay something close to their face value. So, SPVs become a joint creation of equity owners and lenders, purely for the purpose of buying and owning assets, where the lenders advance cash to the SPV in return for bonds and IOUs, while equity holders are anointed managers to look after those assets. Assets, when parked safely within the SPV cannot be redeployed as collateral even in the midst of irresponsible buying spree.

Now, this technically might spell out the reasons for why an SPV is even required in the first place. But, enter caveat, for the architecture of an SPV is what lends complexity and a degree of murkiness to it. If one were to look at the architecture of SPV holdings, things get a bit muddled in that not only is the SPV a limited company registered under the Companies Act 2013, the promotion of SPV would lie chiefly with the state/union territory and elected Urban Local Body (ULB) on a 50:50 equity holding. The state/UT and ULB have full onus to call upon private players as part of the equity, but with the stringent condition that the share of state/UT and ULB would always remain equal and upon addition be in majority of 50%. So, with permutations and combinations, it is deduced that the maximum share a private player can have will be 48% with the state/UT and ULB having 26% each. Initially, to ensure a minimum capital base for the SPV, the paid up capital of the SPV should be such that the ULB’s share has an option to increase it to the full amount of the first installment provided by the Government of India. There is more than meets the eye here, since a major component is the equity shareholding, and from here on things begin to get complex. This is also the stage where SPV gets down to fulfilling its responsibilities and where the role of elected representatives of the people, either at the state/UT level or at the ULB level appears to get hazy. Why is this so? The Board of the SPV, despite having these elected representatives has in no certain ways any clarity on the decisions of those represented making a strong mark when the SPV gets to apply its responsibilities. SPVs, now armed with finances can take on board consultative expertise from the market, thus taking on the role befitting their installation in the first place, i.e. going along the privatization of services in tune with the market-oriented neoliberal policies. Such an arrangement is essentially dressing up the Economic Zones in new clothes sewn with tax exemptions, duties and stringent labour laws in bringing forth the most dangerous aspect of Blue Revolution/Economy/Sagarmala Project, viz. privatized governance. In short, this is how armed with finances, the doctrine of privatized governance could be realized, and SPV actually becomes the essence to attain it.

Turning our focus to what is often termed the glue in Project Finance, the instrument widely practiced today and what often joins PPPs and SPVs into a node of financing, Financial Intermediaries. Although, very much susceptible to abuse for the way it has been implemented, these are institutions that provide the market function of matching borrowers and lenders or traders. Financial intermediaries facilitate transactions between those with excess cash in relation to current requirements (suppliers of capital) and those with insufficient cash in relation to current requirements (users of capital) for mutual benefit. Now these take on astronomical importance considering that almost every other Non-Banking Financial Institution or an SPV could potentially be a financial intermediary. For example, insurance companies, credit unions, financial advisors, mutual funds and investment trusts are financial intermediaries. Financial intermediaries are able to transform the risk characteristics of assets because they can overcome a market failure and resolve an information asymmetry problem. Information asymmetry in credit markets arises because borrowers generally know more about their investment projects than lenders do. The information asymmetry can occur “ex ante” or “ex post”. An ex ante information asymmetry arises when lenders cannot differentiate between borrowers with different credit risks before providing loans and leads to an adverse selection problem. Adverse selection problems arise when an increase in interest rates leaves a more risky pool of borrowers in the market for funds. Financial intermediaries are then more likely to be lending to high-risk borrowers, because those who are willing to pay high interest rates will, on average, be worse risks. The information asymmetry problem occurs ex post when only borrowers, but not lenders, can observe actual returns after project completion. This leads to a moral hazard problem. Moral hazard arises when a borrower engages in activities that reduce the likelihood of a loan being repaid. An example of moral hazard is when firms’ owners “siphon off” funds (legally or illegally) to themselves or to associates, for example, through loss-making contracts signed with associated firms.

The problem with imperfect information is that information is a “public good”. If costly privately-produced information can subsequently be used at less cost by other agents, there will be inadequate motivation to invest in the publicly optimal quantity of information. The implication for financial intermediaries is as follows. Once banks obtain information they must be able to signal their information advantage to lenders without giving away their information advantage. One reason, financial intermediaries can obtain information at a lower cost than individual lenders is that financial intermediation avoids duplication of the production of information. Moreover, there are increasing returns to scale to financial intermediation. Financial intermediaries develop special skills in evaluating prospective borrowers and investment projects. They can also exploit cross- sectional (across customers) information and re-use information over time. Adverse selection increases the likelihood that loans will be made to bad credit risks, while moral hazard lowers the probability that a loan will be repaid. As a result, lenders may decide in some circumstances that they would rather not make a loan and credit rationing may occur. There are two forms of credit rationing: (i) some loan applicants may receive a smaller loan than they applied for at the given interest rate, or (ii) they may not receive a loan at all, even if they offered to pay a higher interest rate.

In other words, financial intermediaries play an important role in credit markets because they reduce the cost of channelling funds between relatively uninformed depositors to uses that are information-intensive and difficult to evaluate, leading to a more efficient allocation of resources. Intermediaries specialize in collecting information, evaluating projects, monitoring borrowers’ performance and risk sharing. Despite this specialization²⁰, the existence of financial intermediaries does not replicate the credit market outcomes that would occur under a full information environment. The existence of imperfect, asymmetrically-held information causes frictions in the credit market. Changes to the information structure and to variables which may be used to overcome credit frictions (such as firm collateral and equity) will in turn cause the nature and degree of credit imperfections to alter. Banks and other intermediaries are “special” where they provide credit to borrowers on terms which those borrowers would not otherwise be able to obtain. Because of the existence of economies of scale²¹ in loan markets, small firms in particular may have difficulties obtaining funding from non-bank sources and so are more reliant on bank lending than are other firms. Adverse shocks to the information structure, or to these firms’ collateral or equity levels, or to banks’ ability to lend, may all impact on firms’ access to credit and hence to investment and output.

This section started with a shocker, and then weaved the plot generically in a deliberate manner to highlight the financial instruments in use for funding the massive Blue Revolution/Economy and Sagarmala Project. From the generic sense, it is time to move on to the specifics, where in the next section, one could easily fathom the generic nature of these instruments in use. this section was indeed technical, but a major collaborator to understanding the contours of Project Finance, and how is it that such instruments govern the polity and the policy of the ruling dispensation. Let us therefore, turn to what engineers the funding of this infrastructural giant.

Engineering Finance for Blue Revolution/Economy and Sagarmala Project

To reiterate, at the Central level, the Sagarmala Development Company (SDC) has been set up under the Companies Act, 2013 to assist the State level/zone level Special Purpose Vehicles (SPVS), as well as SPVs to be set up by the ports, with equity support for implementation of projects under Sagarmala to be undertaken by them. The formation of SDC was approved by the Cabinet on 20th July 2016 and was incorporated on 31st August 2016. It may be clarified that the implementation of the projects shall be done by the Central Line Ministries, State Governments/State Maritime Boards and SPVs and the SDC will provide a funding window and/or take up only those residual projects that cannot be funded by any other means/mode. The SDC will primarily provide equity support to the State-level or port-level SPV. All efforts would be made to implement these projects through the private sector and through the Public Private Participation (PPP) wherever feasible, strictly following the established guidelines and modality of appraisal and sanction of PPP projects. Projects in which SDC will take an equity stake, are expected to start giving returns only after 5-6 years. Therefore, SDC will be supported during initial 5-6 years through budgetary allocation of Ministry of Shipping. SDC will also be raising funds as debt/equity (as long term capital) from multi-lateral and bilateral funding agencies, as per the requirements, in consultation with Department of Economic Affairs. The SPVs in which SDCL will invest may start giving dividends once they become profitable and will constitute a revenue stream. The expenses incurred for project development will be treated as part of the equity contribution of SDC. In case SDCL is not taking any stake or the expenses incurred are more than the stake of SDC, then it will be defrayed by the SPV to SDC. SDC may, in future, want to divest its investment in any particular SPV to recoup its capital for future projects. At the State level, the State Maritime Boards/State Port Departments shall service the State Sagarmala Committees and also be, inter alia responsible for coordination and implementation of individual projects, including through SPVs and oversight. The State Governments/State Maritime  Boards (SMBs) shall implement such identified projects either from their own budgets or through SPVs wherein the SDC may provide equity support, as may be required and necessary. Funds will be sought for the implementation of residual projects from time to time in the budgets of the respective ministries/departments which will be implementing the projects. The Ministries/State Governments/Maritime Boards shall implement such identified either from their own budgets or through SPVs wherein the SDC may provide equity support, as may be required and necessary. Projects considered for funding (other than equity support) under Sagarmala’s budget shall be appraised and approved under the extant instructions and guidelines of the Ministry of Finance. Road and rail connectivity projects, already appraised and approved by the Ministry of Road Transport & Highways and Ministry of Railways respectively, will be considered as appraised projects. A representative of Ministry of Shipping could be a member of the project appraisal committee, set up by the relevant Ministries. Projects considered for equity support under Sagarmala and to be financed by SDC, will be independently appraised and approved by SDC as per its procedure. One can see that even if the title of the section is engineering, it is actually the architecture of who gets to fund what that is slowly building up the complexity of Sagarmala. Let us take a brief look at the numbers before getting back to engineering of funding.

As of March 2017, under Sagarmala, 415 projects, at an estimated investment of approximately Rs. 8 lakh crore, have already been identified across port modernization & new port development, port connectivity enhancement, port-linked industrialization and coastal community development for phase wise implementation over the period 2015 to 2035. As per the approved implementation plan of Sagarmala, these projects are to be taken up by the relevant Central Ministries/Agencies and State Governments preferably through private/PPP mode.

Some of the key projects are:

• Rs. 58.5 Crore released for capital dredging for Gogha-Dahej RO-Pax Ferry Services project
• Rs. 50 Crore released for construction of RoB cum Flyover at Ranichak level crossing at Kolkata Port
• Rs. 43.76 Crore released for RO-RO Services Project at Mandwa
• Rs. 20 Crore released for setting up second rail line from Take-off Point A cabin atDurgachak (Haldia Dock Complex)
• Rs. 20 Crore released for Vizag Port road connectivity to NH5
• Rs. 10 Crore released for development of a full-fledged Truck Parking Terminal adjacent to NH7A (VOCPT)

As part of the Sagarmala Programme, 6 new port locations have been identified, namely – Vadhavan, Enayam, Sagar Island, Paradip Outer Harbour, Sirkazhi and Belekeri. The current status of each of the proposed new port locations is as follows:

Increasing the share of coastal shipping and inland navigation in the transport modal mix is one of the key objectives of Sagarmala. In order to equip ports for movement of coastal cargo, the scope of coastal berth scheme has been expanded and merged with Sagarmala. Under the scheme, the financial assistance of 50% of project cost is provided to Major Ports/State Governments for construction of Coastal Berths, Breakwater, mechanization of coastal berths and capital dredging. Rs. 152 Cr has been released for 16 projects under this scheme. To augment transshipment capacity in the country, Vizhinjam (Kerala) and Enayam (Tamil Nadu) are being developed as transshipment ports. Vizhinjam is being developed as transshipment hub under PPP mode by Government of Kerala with Viability Gap Funding²² from Government of India.

Switching back to engineering, projects considered for funding under Sagarmala will either be provided equity support (SPV route) from SDC or funded (other than equity support) from the budget of Ministry of Shipping. Port projects will be primarily funded through the SPV route. Once the project is funded after due appraisal and approval, to the extent and limits prescribed under the guidelines, funds shall be released once all the clearances are in place. Most importantly, no other guarantees²³ will be provided to the projects considered for funding.

The fund contribution from Sagarmala (from the budget of Ministry of Shipping) in any project will be limited to 50 per cent of project cost as per the Detailed Project Report (DPR) or tendered cost, whichever is lesser. 50 per cent is the cap of assistance from all sources/schemes of Government of India and will be provided in three tranches²⁴ based on project milestones, In case of UTs, where no other sources of funding are available, the limit of 50 per cent could be relaxed. The fund released for a project being implemented in convergence mode with the schemes of other Central Line Ministries will not be higher than the approved ceiling of financial assistance under the concerned Central Sector Scheme (CSS). Projects having high social impact but with no return or low Internal Rate of Return (IRR)²⁵ (e.g. fishing harbour projects, coastal community skill development projects, coastal tourism infrastructure projects etc.) may be provided funding, in convergence with the schemes of other Central Line Ministries, for implementation under Engineering, Procurement and Construction (EPC) mode. EPC mode is an interesting digression from PPP model as the former has a slight edge over the latter. In an EPC mode, the Government bears the entire financial burden and funds the project by raising capital through issuing bonds. In PPP, private entity would do cost-benefit analysis and would bid for project. Cheapest bid would be selected. So incentive is to reduce bid price. But as construction starts, there are local protests against land acquisition, and thus work halts. That means now costs would go up. Project faces market risk. Private entity will suffer loss and would refuse to work on pre-agreed bid. He would ask for more funding from Government. Government machinery, lethargic or may be skeptic of bidder’s intentions, would also make counter-arguments. And so there would be litigations. In EPC, it is government who is going to take up engineering. But, does government has engineering expertise? No, so government would call for bids for engineering knowledge. Thereafter, the government would give out calls for procurement of raw material and construction expertise. Under an EPC contract, the contractor designs the installation, procures the necessary materials and builds the project, either directly or by subcontracting part of the work. In some cases, the contractor carries the project risk for schedule as well as budget in return for a fixed price, called lump sum or LSTK²⁶ depending on the agreed scope of work. So here, if project halts due to say local protests, government will deal with it. The private entity is saved from political questions. Anyway private entities are there merely for bottomline, whereas government is there for political tussle and governance. Thus EPC makes more sense and is an alternative for PPP. But, barring a few exceptions, the Government is still holding on to PPP as the preferred mode.

The equity contribution from SDC, in any project SPV, will be decided based on the project equity as per its DPR and will generally not exceed 49 per cent of the project equity. SDC can take equity contribution in existing or newly incorporated SPVs formed by State Governments/Maritime Boards/Ports etc. provided that these SPVs have projects which are ready for implementation. SDC can take equity in an existing or newly incorporated umbrella SPVs formed by State Governments/Maritime Boards/Ports etc. provided the same has been duly approved by the competent authority. SDC’s participation in the umbrella SPV would not restrain SDC from taking part in any other project SPV created by the same State Governments/Maritime Boards/Ports. SDC shall take only token equity to initiate/assist the process of project development in those SPVs which are scouting for projects or having projects under development stage only. As it would be difficult to ascertain the revenue flow from a particular project, a separate accounting for each project is an important clause in the contract document of the SPV. Continuing in line with equity-based funding, the question then arises as to what would be the recommended monitoring parameters for funded projects for equity and for those other than equity? Projects which are provided equity support (SPV route) by SDC will be monitored by the SPVs as well as SDC and Ministry of Shipping through an appropriate monitoring and evaluation mechanism. For projects which are provided funding (other than equity support), the fund recipients/project proponents will submit monthly progress report (physical and financial) of projects as per the electronic format/ MIS prescribed by SDC. SDC along with the fund recipients/project proponents will monitor the progress of projects based on the same. Additionally, the fund recipients/ project proponents will submit the utilization certificate for the fund released in the previous tranche for claiming release of subsequent installments/tranches. Wherever possible, the fund recipients/project proponents will submit a completion certificate, issued by an independent 3rd party agency, along with the final utilization certificate to claim the final tranche of fund. The 3rd party agency is to be appointed by the Ministry of Shipping from the approved panel maintained by the Indian Ports Association (IPA) for this purpose. The cost of appointing and functioning of the 3rd party agency will be borne by the Ministry of Shipping. The fund recipients/project proponents will maintain financial records, supporting documents, statistical records and all other records, to support performance of the project.

Although the monitoring mechanisms look neat on paper, there is absence of any transparency and accountability of whether these are in existence, or are these to be invoked at a stage when funds reach a point of questionability either in the sense of non- repayment, or by stressed assets, the consequent of which are the Non-Performing Assets. Still, what is not very clear is who are the funders involved apart from Government of India and State Governments. It is absolutely clear though, that both these entities would be taking recourse to National Financial Institutions (NFIs) and Non-Banking Financial Institutions (FIs) in addition to packing coffers in the budgets (both at the central and at the state levels) towards the massive investments in point. But, what of the International Financial Institutions (IFIs), or bi-lateral development institutions? This question is slightly jumping the gun, and would be understood in the perspective of what has now come to be called Blue Growth Initiative (BGI). Let us park this for a section and turn to looking at Sagarmala with some of its humungous initiatives that would give an idea behind numbers and figures.

Multi-headed Hydra (Projects envisaged under Sagarmala)

That the Government is going full steam on infrastructure cannot be fathomed by looking at Sagarmala in isolation. This has to be looked in tandem with industrial corridors, coastal economic zones, inland waterways, and tourism among a host of infrastructural stressed-upon points. Though, much of that is largely outside the scope of this chapter, it nevertheless is crucial to hover the compass of analysis in a loci around these allied infrastructures.

Starting with port modernization and new port development, Sagarmala is a gamut of 189 projects tipped at a whopping 1.42 lakh crore. Of these, the masterplans have already been finalized for 12 major ports; 142 projects at a cost of Rs. 91, 434 crore identified for implementation till 2035; and 42 projects worth Rs. 23, 263 crore are already under implementation.

Port modernization along with new port development and major port operational efficiency improvement is to be integrated into what is now referred to as promotion of cruise tourism, foe which a task force has already been constituted and where now foreign flag vessels with passengers on board would be allowed to call at Indian ports without obtaining a license from director General of Shipping. Well, isn’t this what globalization is all about? Yes, largely, and more concertedly if the operating procedures effectuating these get standardized, and this is what has precisely happened for promoting cruise tourism in consultation with Bureau of Immigration, Ministry of Home Affairs, Central Board of Excise and Customs, Central Industrial Security Force and Port Authorities. The collaborative efforts of these authorities have led to the constitution of port-level committees to address manpower, coordination and logistical support. It is under the aegis of Sagarmala that cruise terminals are under development at Chennai and Mormugao in Goa.

Under the umbrella of port connectivity enhancements, 170 projects are either approved or in the pipeline at a cost of Rs. 2.3 lakh crore comprising of rail connectivity projects, road connectivity projects, multi-modal logistics parks and coastal shipping. Rail and road connectivity are precisely the components of freight corridors also launched under the name of industrial or economic corridors. Coastal shipping on the other hand is closely amalgamated with inland waterways. On a project-wise scale, there are plans to implement road projects under Sagarmala including 10 freight friendly expressways (E.g. Expressway from Ahmedabad to JNPT). Other proposals include awarding implementation of Heavy Haul Rail Corridor project between Talcher & Paradip in coordination with Ministry of Railways, proposing Cabotage relaxation for 2 years subject to level playing field for Indian flag ships, and bringing out a modal shift incentive scheme for Inland Water Transport sector by developing 37 prioritized National Waterways.

On the port-led industrialization front, 33 projects are either approved, or in the pipeline at a cost of Rs. 4.2 lakh crore with perspective plans prepared for 14 coastal economic zones (CEZs). Moreover, 29 potential port-linked industrial clusters identified across Energy, Materials, Discrete Manufacturing and Maritime sectors are identified. The futuristic plans for port-led industrialization involves developing master plans for the 14 coastal economic zones in a phased manner with the first phase covering the states of Gujarat, Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu. The proposals also include developing detailed project reports (DPRs) for maritime clusters in Gujarat and Tamil Nadu. Crucially, the integration of smart cities with Sagarmala would be the implementation of Kandla & Paradip Smart Port Industrial Cities. What the Government has achieved through the New Shipbuilding Policy is granting shipyards infrastructure status, thus helping avail cheap working capital. The policy also has provided exemptions on taxes and duties, and made recommended arrangement for financial assistance to the tune of Rs. 20 crore of the initial cost flowing in from the center.

The Coastal Community Development could be looked at under two broad categories, viz. skill development and fisheries development. Under the category of skill development, Rs. 30 crore have been sanctioned, of which Rs. 10 crore are already released towards safety training for workers in Alang-Sisoya shipyard. For the Coastal Districts Skill Training Project under Deen Dayal Upadhyay Grameen Kaushal Yojana (DDU-GKY), Rs. 13.77 crore have been sanctioned & Rs. 6.9 crore are already released. The Ministry of Shipping is undertaking skill gap analysis in 21 coastal districts, and the action plan for 6 districts in Gujarat, Maharashtra & AP are already prepared with projects from the same to be implemented under DDU-GKY. Under fisheries development, the Ministry of Shipping is part-funding select fishing harbour projects under Sagarmala in convergence with Department of Animal Husbandry Dairying & Fisheries (Ministry of Agriculture). On a more specific project-wise data, Rs. 52.17 crore is sanctioned for modernization & upgrading of Sassoon Dock. Upgradation of Kulai, Veraval and Mangrol fishing harbours are in the pipeline. For the Ministry of Shipping, this would support development of deep sea fishing vessels and fish processing centers in convergence with Department of Animal Husbandry Dairying & Fisheries.

The scale is massive and thus makes the moot question of who is financing Sagarmala all the more pressing. The disclaimer is: not much is known as there is a tremendous lack of transparency and accountability as regards this. But, information from discrete sources that are in the public domain at least gives a fair enough idea of who could be behind this gigantic infrastructure? At the same time, one needs to look at the intricate knot between the financiers and Blue Growth Initiative to draw out a clear message, which shouldn’t be shocking anymore, and that being the policies and funds are internationally-oriented. It is this section, the penultimate one in the chapter that we now turn to.

Who possibly could be driving the impetus for Blue Revolution/Economy and Sagarmala?

Are there International Financial Institutions involved? Hopefully by the end of this section, there would be some clarity to the muddied waters. Shipping ministry is roping in global multilateral agencies to extend a helping hand to entrepreneurs looking to explore Rs 3.5 lakh-crore of investment opportunities under the Sagarmala project, which was aimed at port-led development along 7,500-km coastline. Devendra Kumar Rai, Director at the Ministry of Shipping, said Sagarmala Development Company, with an equity base of Rs 1,000 crore, would chip in for investments and viability gap funding to help entrepreneurs achieve viable returns on their investments. He also said that the company was also seeking the support of Asian Development Bank (ADB) and other multilateral agencies for program loans to various initiatives under the Sagarmala project.²⁷ Admitting that not all the projects being contemplated under the Sagarmala project would offer attractive returns on investments, Rai said, “The shipping ministry views that unless there is at least 13 per cent IRR, no private investor would come forward to invest.” To address the issue of not so attractive returns, the ministry would encourage some projects under the public-private partnership model and even extend the viability gap funding (VGF) up to 40 per cent of the project cost to turn the projects viable, Rai said. MT Krishna Babu, chairman of Visakhapatnam Port Trust, said various development projects will be thrown open for private participation. “The five greenfield ports alone would involve investments of around Rs 25,000 crore each in phases.” Babu said it will mobilise funds from government and global agencies like ADB and Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) and decide on the nature of funding to the unviable projects – whether equity or VGF.²⁸

Asian Development Bank (ADB) has been giving boosters to India’s infrastructure development program from time to time, and injected yet another towards the end of June this year, when it promised the country its commitment to investing $10 billion over the next five years. Half the sum, or $5 billion were to be used for developing the 2,500 km East Coast Economic Corridor, which will ultimately extend from Kolkata to Tuticorin in Tamil Nadu. ADB had last year approved $631 million to develop the 800-km industrial corridor between Visakhapatnam and Chennai.²⁹ The East Coast Economic Corridor also aligns with port-led industrialization under Sagarmala initiative and Act East Policy by linking domestic companies with vibrant global production networks of east and southeast Asia.

The World Bank, on the other hand, might not seem to have a direct hand in the funding of Sagarmala, but thinking it thus would be like missing the woods for the trees. Though the Bank is heavily investing in industrial corridors with a significant share in Amritsar-Kolkata Industrial Corridor, and seed capital along with creating conditions ripe for Viability Gap funding along the Delhi-Mumbai Industrial corridor, its involvement in Sagarmala is like an advisory to the Government of India. The World Bank, which has been advising the shipping ministry on the development of the inland waterways and the Clean Ganga mission, has approved an assistance of Rs 4,200 crore for the development of the existing five national waterways. Incidentally, India has jumped 19 places in the latest World Bank ranking in the global logistics performance. The World Bank in its latest once-in-two-year Logistics Performance Index (LPI) said India is now ranked 35th as against the 54th spot it occupied in the previous 2014 report. Such rise in position on the global logistics performance is the policy shot in the arm for India, thus making it conducive for investments to flow in.

But, to understand the policy initiatives behind Blue Revolution/Economy and Sagarmala, one needs to keep a tab on what is known as the Blue Growth Initiative, which happens to be the climate initiatives platform of the United Nations Programme on Environment. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) Blue Growth Initiative (BGI) aims at building resilience of coastal communities and restoring the productive potential of fisheries and aquaculture, in order to support food security, poverty alleviation and sustainable management of living aquatic resources. Promoting international coordination is crucial to strengthen responsible management regimes and practices that can reconcile economic growth and food security with the restoration of the eco-systems they sustain. The initiative works towards two major goals, viz.

1. Enabling environment (capacity building, knowledge platform, and improved governance) established within 2 to 3 years in 10 target countries.

2. 10% reduction of carbon emissions in the 10 target countries in 5 years and 25% in 10 years.
3. 3. Reduction of overfishing by 20% in the target countries in 5 years and 50% in 10 years.
4. 4. “Blue communities” established in 5 target countries and resource stewardship ownership with 30% improved livelihoods.
5. 5. Ecosystem degradation reversed in the target countries and 10% ecosystems restored in 4 target countries within 5 years.

These goals are to be attained by improving the evaluations of ecosystem services in Large Marine Ecosystems including coastal zones and Lakes for local and regional integrated and spatial planning. Also, strengthened fisheries and aquaculture governance and institutional frameworks would augment clear objectives and development paths for the sector; by increasing contributions from the small-scale fisheries and aquaculture sectors – through improved fisheries management, aquaculture development and improved post-harvest practices and market access. The initiative plans to attain increased resilience to climate change, extreme events and other drivers of change through improved knowledge of vulnerability and adaptation and disaster risk management options specific to fisheries, aquaculture and dependent communities who are at the front line of change and thereby providing technical and financial support to transitioning the sector to low-impact and fuel/energy efficiency and Blue Carbon enhancements³⁰. for the medium and long term, the BGI is being promoted as an important vehicle for mobilizing resources and advocacy in international fora. In the global arena, the Initiative is enabling FAO to align with major global initiatives such as the Green Economy in a Blue World (UNEP/IMO/FAO/UNDESA/IUCN/World Fish), the Global Partnership for Oceans GPO (World Bank), the Coral Triangle Initiative, the Oceans SDG, Fishing for the Future (World Fish/FAO), the World Ocean Council and GEF6, as well as commitments stemming from the Rio+20 Conference. The oceans with a current estimated asset value of USD 24 trillion and an annual value addition of US$2.5 trillion, would continue to offer significant economic benefits both in the traditional areas of fisheries, transport, tourism and hydrocarbons as well as in the new fields of deep-sea mining, renewable energy, ocean biotechnology and many more, only if integrated with sustainable practices and business models. With land-based resources depleting fast, there are renewed attempts to further expand economic exploitation of the world’s oceans. However, if not managed sustainably, growing economic engagement with the oceans could risk further aggravation of their already strained health with serious impact on their natural role as the single most important CO₂ sink and replenisher of oxygen. This in turn could accelerate global warming with catastrophic effects on fish stocks, climatic stabilization, water cycle and essential biodiversity. With arguments like these, UNFAO sure needs voices from the communities who would be severely impacted by these policies slapped on them.

So, even if India is not officially a participating nation in the Blue Growth Initiative (BGI), it could easily be drawn that the whole rationale for the Blue Revolution has sprung up from UNFAO. So, what is the viability of Blue Revolution/Economy and Sagarmala? It is to this section we turn now by way of conclusion.

Conclusion

Even while this chapter was being written, another mega infrastructure project in the form of country’s first bullet train was inaugurated to be laid between the Financial Capital Mumbai and Ahmedabad. As Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe lay the foundation stone for the Mumbai-Ahmedabad bullet train project in Gujarat, tribals in Maharashtra and Gujarat will meet tehsildars of tribal areas that will be impacted by the project and submit letters of protest.³¹ Criticisms of the kind are expected and are already taking shape across the coastline.³² But, since this chapter is geared towards understanding the financial and economic ecosystem of Blue Revolution/ Economy and Sagarmala, let us divert our attention to financial critiques of mega infrastructural development projects.

The corporates and multinational Companies have joined together with the intention to grab the ocean and the coast. State and Central governments have become agents of the corporates and are permitting the foreign trawlers in the India deep seas, constructing atomic thermal power stations, disastrous chemical industries, hotels and big resorts and coastal industrial corridors at the coasts. These projects have several illegalities in formulation, approval, sanction and implementation. The livelihood of the fishworkers has not been considered by the elected government.³³ The corporates have freedom to pour toxic affluent in the coastal area and sea soar. As a result fishes died and disappeared. So far more than twenty commercial species of fish have been disappeared from the sea at Kachchh, Gujarat. Similar is the case in other sea areas. Mangroves have been destroyed and land are being used by corporates. Solid toxic wastes and inflatable toxics dumped in forest and other empty threatens human and animal lives in the coastal area.³⁴ This is not a mirror into the post-apocalyptic, run over by hungry capitalism scenario, but a reality that is very much brewing across the coastline of the country from Gujarat in the west to West Bengal in the east.

Economically and financially, there are three major challenges that are encountered in infrastructural mega-projects. In one influential study, Bent Flyvbjerg³⁵, an expert in project management at Oxford’s business school, estimated that nine out of ten go over budget. Second challenge is the time overrun, which directly leads to cost escalation. Finally, the premise that projects need to work on two levels – in the short term for recovering financial outlays and the longer term for creating social impact – often becomes a barrier to taking action. Even projects that are needed do not get executed, especially in places where revenues from a project are unlikely to cover its cost. the enormity of Sagarmala leaves it vulnerable to unviability. In addition to three reasons cited above as to what could challenge a mega-project, these three reasons are most likely to be attributable to why Sagarmala could remain an unfinished dream, and in a dire attempt to realizing it could have enormous adverse effects of the socio-environmental and economical life of the communities coming under its fire.

1. Overoptimism and overcomplexity. In order to justify a project, sometimes costs and timelines are systematically underestimated and benefits systematically overestimated. Flyvbjerg argues that project managers competing for funding massage the data until they come under the limit of what is deemed affordable; stating the real cost, he writes, would make a project unpalatable. From the outset, such projects are on a fast track to failure. One useful reality check is to compare the project under consideration to similar projects that have already been completed. Known as “reference-class forecasting,” this process addresses confirmation bias by forcing decision makers to consider cases that don’t necessarily justify the preferred course of action. But, sadly, India does not have any avenues to a “reference-class forecasting”, for the country has hitherto not known anything on this scale.

2. Poor execution. Having delivered an unrealistically low project budget, the temptation is to cut corners to maintain cost assumptions and protect the (typically slim) profit margins for the engineering and construction firms that have been contracted to deliver the project. Project execution, from design and planning through construction, is riddled with problems such as incomplete design, lack of clear scope, ill-advised shortcuts, and even mathematical errors in scheduling and risk assessment. In part, execution is poor because many projects are so complex that what might seem like routine issues can become major headaches. For example, if steel does not arrive at the job site on time, the delay can stall the entire project. Ditto if one of the specialty trades has a problem. Higher productivity will not compensate for these shortfalls because such delays tend to ripple through the entire project system. Another challenge is low productivity. While the manufacturing sector in India is languishing, raw materials for such mega-projects would always be hindered through supply lines, thus leading to either stalling of the projects, or an exponential cost escalation.

3. Weakness in organizational design and capabilities. Many entities involved inbuilding megaprojects have an organizational setup in which the project director sits four or five levels down from the top leadership. The following structure is common:

   Layer 1: Subcontractor to contractor

   Layer 2: Contractors to construction manager or managing contractor

   Layer 3: Construction manager to owner’s representative

   Layer 4: Owner’s representative to project sponsor

   Layer 5: Project sponsor to business executive

This is a problem because each layer will have a view on how time and costs can be compressed. For example, the first three layers are looking for more work and more money, while the later ones are looking to deliver on time and budget. Also, the authority to make final decisions is often remote from the action. Capabilities, or lack thereof, are another issue. Large projects are typically either sponsored by the government or by an entrepreneur with bold aspirations, where completion times are most often than not compromised.

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Notes:

1 Micro Units Development & Refinance Agency Ltd. (MUDRA) is an institution set up by Government of India to provide funding to the non-corporate, non-farm sector income generating activities of micro and small enterprises whose credit needs are below ₹10 Lakh. Under the aegis of Pradhan Mantri MUDRA Yojana (PMMY), MUDRA has created three products i.e. ‘Shishu’, ‘Kishore’ and ‘Tarun’ as per the stage of growth and funding needs of the beneficiary micro unit. These schemes cover loan amounts as below:

1. a  Shishu: covering loans up to ₹50,000
2. b  Kishore: covering loans above ₹50,000 and up to ₹5,00,000
3. c  Tarun: covering loans above ₹5,00,000 and up to ₹10,00,000

All Non-Corporate Small Business Segment (NCSBS) comprising of proprietorship or partnership firms running as small manufacturing units, service sector units, shopkeepers, fruits/vegetable vendors, truck operators, food-service units, repair shops, machine operators, small industries, food processors and others in rural and urban areas, are eligible for assistance under Mudra. Bank branches would facilitate loans under Mudra scheme as per customer requirements. Loans under this scheme are collateral free loans.

2 Press Information Bureau, Government of India, Ministry of Agriculture. Mission Fingerling with a total expenditure of about Rs. 52000 lakh to achieve Blue Revolution. 11 Mar 2017 <http://pib.nic.in/ newsite/PrintRelease.aspx?relid=159159>

3 Government of India, Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare Department of Animal Husbandry, Dairying & Fisheries. Central Sector Scheme on Blue Revolution: Integrated Development and Management of Fisheries. Jun 2016 <http://dahd.nic.in/sites/default/files/ Guidelines.BR-30616.Fisheries.pdf>

4 Press Information Bureau, Government of India, Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs (CCEA). Integrated Development and Management of Fisheries – a Central Sector Scheme on Blue Revolution. 22 Dec 2015

5 The term “ocean grabbing” has been used to describe actions, policies or initiatives that deprive small- scale fishers of resources, dispossess vulnerable populations of coastal lands, and/or undermine historical access to areas of the sea. Rights and access to marine resources and spaces are frequently reallocated through government or private sector initiatives to achieve conservation, management or development objectives with a variety of outcomes for different sectors of society. For a reallocation to be considered ocean grabbing, it must: (1) occur by means of inadequate governance, and (2) be implemented using actions that undermine human security and livelihoods, or (3) produce impacts that reduce social- ecological well-being.

6 The Sagarmala initiative would also strive to ensure sustainable development of the population living in the Coastal Economic Zone (CEZ). This would be done by synergising and coordinating with State Governments and line Ministries of Central Government through their existing schemes and programmes such as those related to community and rural development, tribal development and employment generation, fisheries, skill development, tourism promotion etc. In order to provide funding for such projects and activities that may be covered by departmental schemes a separate fund by the name ‘Community Development Fund’ would be created.

7 In the words of T Peter, General Secretary, National Fish Workers Forum (NFF), “Governments support corporates and no one is concerned about the livelihood of the people. Now, the Union government is bent on supporting Adani group on the pretext of developing ports across the country. The Sagarmala project, which proposes setting up industrial corridors, 52 new ports and petrochemical region will deplete the vulnerable coastline and will leave the survival of the fishermen community at stake. It will only support real estate majors and industrialists.” Fishermen oppose Sagarmala project. Times of India. 23 Dec 2016 <http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/thiruvananthapuram/fishermen-oppose-sagarmala- project/articleshow/56140852.cms>

8 Kohli, K. & Menon, M. Of a frictionless development : Ports have the potential to endanger the environment. Daily News and Analysis (DNA), 21 May 2017 <http://www.dnaindia.com/analysis/ column-of-a-frictionless-development-2445597>

9 India has around 7,500-km long coastline, but the country transports only 6 per cent of its cargo through the waterways compared with around 55 per cent on roadways and 35 per cent by the railways. As a result, India’s logistics costs as percentage of its GDP is as high as 19 per cent compared with 12.5 per cent in China. According to the echoes in New Delhi, India’s exports would go up by one and a half times if the country was able to reduce its logistics costs to 12 per cent. India’s cargo traffic growth is expected to increase to 2,500 MT in 2024-25 from 1,072 MT in 2015-16. In India, share of coastal and inland water transport is 2-3 per cent compared to China’s 25 per cent.

10 Sagarmala Coordination and Steering Committee (SCSC) is constituted under the chairmanship of the Cabinet Secretary with Secretaries of the Ministries of Shipping, Road Transport and Highways, Tourism, Defence, Home Affairs, Environment, Forest & Climate Change, Departments of Revenue, Expenditure, Industrial Policy and Promotion, Chairman, Railway Board and CEO, NITI Aayog as members. This Committee will provide coordination between various ministries, state governments and agencies connected with implementation and review the progress of implementation of the National Perspective Plan, Detailed Master Plans and projects. It will, inter alia, consider issues relating to funding of projects and their implementation. This Committee will also examine financing options available for the funding of projects, the possibility of public-private partnership in project financing/construction/ operation.

11 A National Sagarmala Apex Committee (NSAC) is geared for overall policy guidance and high level coordination, and to review various aspects of planning and implementation of the plan and projects. The NSAC shall be chaired by the Minister in-charge of Shipping, with Cabinet Ministers from stakeholder Ministries and Chief Ministers/Ministers in-charge of ports of maritime states as members. This committee, while providing policy direction and guidance for the initiative’s implementation, shall approve the overall National Perspective Plan (NPP) and review the progress of implementation of these plans.

12 Ray, S. S. Infrastructure: How Sagarmala project can be a shot in the arm for the economy. Financial Express. 21 Nov 2016 <http://www.financialexpress.com/economy/infrastructure-how-sagarmala-project- can-be-a-shot-in-the-arm-for-the-economy/450802/>

13 Indian ports handle more than 90 percent of India’s total EXIM trade volume. However, the current proportion of merchandize trade in Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of India is only 42 percent, whereas for some developed countries and regions in the world such as Germany and European Union, it is 75 percent and 70 percent respectively. Therefore, there is a great scope to increase the share of merchandising trade in India’s GDP. With the Union Government’s “Make in India” initiative, the share of merchandise trade in India’s GDP is expected to increase and approach levels achieved in developed countries. India lags far behind in ports and logistics infrastructure. Against a share of 9 percent of railways and 6 percent of roads in the GDP the share of ports is only 1 percent. In addition high logistics costs make Indian exports uncompetitive. This is another of the reasons from the economic front that the government wants to drill into the populace as a justification for the launch of the initiative.

14 Sood, J. Govt mulls Rs10 trillion public financing for infrastructure projects. LiveMint. 12 Sep 2017 <http://www.livemint.com/Home-Page/G63KRD11vfvag0lOWJtBIN/Govt-mulls-Rs10-trillion-public- financing-for-infrastructure.html>

15 As there are limited options available to raise funds for infrastructure finance, the plan to raise money from retirees and provident fund beneficiaries comes as Indian banks, loaded with bad debt, have turned averse to funding infrastructure projects. With many large conglomerates and infrastructure companies weighed down by debt, the onus of creating infrastructure has fallen on the government.

16 India needs funds for its ambitious plans such as Sagarmala (ports) and Bharatmala (roads) to improve its transport infrastructure. While the total investment for the Bharatmala plan is estimated at Rs10 trillion – the largest ever outlay for a government road construction scheme – the country has envisaged Rs8 trillion of investment until 2035 under the Sagarmala programme.

17 We should have more to talk about Financial Intermediaries in a while, but is is important to note that pension funds belong to this category. Pension funds may be defined as forms of institutional investor, which collect pool and invest funds contributed by sponsors and beneficiaries to provide for the future pension entitlements of beneficiaries. They thus provide means for individuals to accumulate saving over their working life so as to finance their consumption needs in retirement, either by means of a lump sum or by provision of an annuity, while also supplying funds to end-users such as corporations, other households (via securitized loans) or governments for investment or consumption.

18 The volatility of stock returns is why pension funds invested in bonds in the first place. The theory with alternatives is that they earn a premium return in exchange for the difficulty of investing in them. Small investors lack easy access to these asset classes, and the investments are often illiquid. As a result, by investing in alternatives, pension funds should be able to get either returns similar to those of equities at a lower risk, or higher returns at a similar level of risk. That’s the theory. The evidence on alternative investments is considerably more mixed. Hedge funds are supposed to pursue equity-like returns with lower levels of risk. Hedge funds don’t have to report their performance to public databases, and are more likely to do so when returns are good. They often engage in strategies that produce modest regular returns at the expense of rare catastrophic losses, which may make their track records look misleadingly strong.

19 This could be acted upon, with a specific case study that underlines the knowledge-base requisite for any understanding of financials involved in the project. Knowledge-base could encompass: issues for the host government/legislative provisions, public/private infrastructure partnerships, public/private financial structures, credit requirement of lenders, and analytical techniques to measure the feasibility of the project. In case of Project Finance, the financier principally looks to the assets and revenue of the project in order to secure and service the loan. In contrast to an ordinary borrowing situation, in a project financing the financier usually has little or no recourse to the non-project assets of the borrower or the sponsors of the project. In this situation, the credit risk associated with the borrower is not as important as in an ordinary loan transaction; what is most important is the identification, analysis, allocation and management of every risk associated with the project.

20 This might sound like an argument from a Devil’s Advocate, for financial intermediaries are nowadays increasingly used as markets for firms’ assets. Financial intermediaries appear to have a key role in the restructuring and liquidation of firms in distress. In particular, financial intermediaries play an active role in the reallocation of displaced capital, meant both as the piece-meal reallocation of assets and, more broadly, as the sale of entire bankrupt corporations to healthy ones. A key part of reorganization under main bank supervision or management is the implementation of a plan of asset sales with proceeds typically used to recover bank loans. Knowing possible synergies among firms, banks can suggest solutions for the efficient reallocation of assets and of corporate control and that in several countries there is widespread anecdotal evidence, though not quantitative one, on this role of banks. Healthy firms search around for the displaced capital of bankrupt firms but matching is imperfect and firms can end up with machines unsuitable for them. Financial intermediaries arise as internal, centralized markets where information on machines and buyers is readily available, allowing displaced capital to migrate towards its most productive uses. Financial intermediaries can perform this role by aggregating the information on firms collected in the credit market. The function of intermediaries as matchmakers between savers and firms in the credit market can support their function as internal markets for assets. Intuitively, by increasing the number of highly productive matches in the credit market, intermediaries increase the share of highly productive second hand users in the decentralized resale market. This improvement in the quality of the decentralized secondary market reduces the incentive of firms to address financial intermediaries for their ability as re-deployers. However, by increasing the number of highly productive matches in the credit market, intermediaries create also wealthy buyers without assets and contribute to decrease the thickness of the decentralized resale market. This makes the decentralized market less appealing and increases the incentive of firms to use intermediaries as resale markets. When the quality improvement in the decentralized market is not too big and the second effect prevails, better matchmaking in the credit market supports the function of intermediaries as internal markets for assets.

21 Economies of scale is an economics term that describes a competitive advantage that large entities have over smaller entities. It means that the larger the business, non-profit or government, the lower its costs. For example, the cost of producing one unit is less when many units are produced at once. This is confusingly used with economies of scope. It is worthwhile to differentiate the two here. Economies of scope occur when a company branches out into multiple product lines. When companies broaden their scope, they benefit by combining complementary business functions, product lines or manufacturing processes. For example, most newspapers diversified into similar product lines, such as magazines and online news, to diversify their revenue from declining newspaper sales. They achieved some economies of scope by taking advantage of their advertising sales teams, who could sell advertising in all three product lines.

22 Viability Gap Funding (VGF) is a special facility to support the financial viability of those infrastructure projects, which are economically justifiable but not viable commercially in the immediate future. It involves upfront grant assistance of up to 20% of the project cost for state or central PPP projects implemented by the private sector developer who is selected through competitive bidding. An Empowered Committee has been set up for quick processing of cases. Sectors shortlisted for availing Viability Gap Funding Assistance include Roads and bridges, railways, seaports, airports, inland waterways, Power, Urban transport, water supply, sewerage, solid waste management and other physical infrastructure in urban areas. Infrastructure projects in Special Economic Zones and International convention centers and other tourism infrastructure projects.

23 The use of guarantees offers extra security to the lender or business who is providing the finance. For an SME with only one director in the company, the lender relies heavily on their ability to pay it back. But with another person or company to back up the loan agreement, there is extra security that the lender will be able to recover their funds. In particular, for those companies or directors with an adverse credit record, they may rely on the use of a guarantor in order to secure the funds they need. Every extra guarantee added gives the lender more confidence, especially when guaranteed by individuals or firms with strong credit records and reputations. Guarantees are primarily of two types: (1) A pure guarantee ensures that the third party meets their financial obligations. They are legally obliged and responsible to be a guarantor. (2) A conditional payment guarantee means that they are liable to pay any amounts outstanding.

24 Tranches are pieces, portions or slices of debt or structured financing. Each portion, or tranche, is one of several related securities offered at the same time but with different risks, rewards and maturities. For example, a collateralized mortgage obligation CMO offering a partitioned mortgage-backed securities MBS portfolio might have mortgage tranches with one-year, two-year, five-year and 20-year maturities, all with varying degrees of risk and returns. A tranche is a common financial structure for debt securities such as mortgage-backed securities. These types of securities are made up of multiple mortgage pools that have a wide variety of mortgages, from safe loans with lower interest rates to risky loans with higher rates. Each specific mortgage pool also has its own time to maturity, which factors into the risk and reward benefits. Therefore, tranches are made to divide up the different mortgage profiles into slices that have financial terms suitable for specific investors.

25 Internal rate of return (IRR) is the interest rate at which the net present value of all the cash flows (both positive and negative) from a project or investment equal zero. Internal rate of return is used to evaluate the attractiveness of a project or investment. If the IRR of a new project exceeds a company’s required rate of return, that project is desirable. If IRR falls below the required rate of return, the project should be rejected. IRR does not measure the absolute size of the investment or the return. This means that IRR can favor investments with high rates of return even if the dollar amount of the return is very small. For example, a $1 investment returning $3 will have a higher IRR than a $1 million investment returning $2 million. Another short-coming is that IRR can’t be used if the investment generates interim cash flows. Finally, IRR does not consider cost of capital and can’t compare projects with different durations. IRR is best-suited for analyzing venture capital and private equity investments, which typically entail multiple cash investments over the life of the business, and a single cash outflow at the end via IPO or sale.

26 LSTK stands for Lump Sum Turn Key. This is a contractual agreement in which a fixed price is agreed for the execution of a project or part of a project. Once the final development is completed a finished functioning asset is handed over to the client, hence the term “Turn Key” which effectively means ready to operate.

27 The Economic Times. Government roping in multilateral agencies for Rs 3.5 lakh crore Sagarmala project. 12 Feb 2016 <http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/economy/infrastructure/government- roping-in-multilateral-agencies-for-rs-3-5-lakh-crore-sagarmala-project/articleshow/50956475.cms>

28 ibid.

29 Bhaskar, U. ADB to invest $10 billion over five years in Indian infrastructure. LiveMint. 30 Jun 2017 <http://www.livemint.com/Politics/CTTTI4B5VWYVdkh6qOnV4J/ADB-to-invest-10-billion-over-five- years-in-Indian-infrastr.html>

30 The idea of blue economy was argued during the Rio+20 preparatory meetings, where several Small Islands Developing States (SIDS) observed that ‘Green Economy’ had limited relevance for them; instead, ‘Green Economy in a Blue World’ was a good concept and most suitable for the sustainable development and management of ocean resources.

31 Phadke, M. Tribals, farmers in Gujarat and Maharahshtra who will lose land protest bullet train project. The Hindustan Times. 14 Sep 2017 <http://www.hindustantimes.com/mumbai-news/tribals-and- farmers-in-gujarat-and-maharahshtra-who-will-lose-land-to-the-bullet-train-project-protest-against-it/ story-AWbl8Z6VR3EOdOTP73twtI.html>

32 Thozhilalar koodam. Sea is for the fishing communities – Coastal Yatra by NFF in Tamil Nadu. 15 Jul 2017 <http://tnlabour.in/fish-workers/5654&gt;

33 The proposed Enayam International Container Transhipment Terminal (EICTT), a port to be developed at Enayam, Kanyakumari, has witnessed a lot of opposition from the fishing community over the last year. The port, which was earlier proposed to be established at Colachel, was shifted 10 km away to Enayam last year. There has also been criticism over the proximity of the proposed Enayam port to the upcoming Vizhinjam port in Trivandrum and Vallarpadam port at Cochin. The National Fishworkers’ Forum (NFF) has also raised concern about Idinthakarai, which has been the epicentre for protests against the Kudankulam Nuclear Power Plant (KNPP), since 2012. Fishermen and environmentalists have been opposing the nuclear power plant as it could have drastic impact on the livelihood of the fishing community.

34 Sagarmala project: Serious concerns being raised about environmental effects on coastal areas. counterview.org. 21 Nov 2016 <https://counterview.org/2016/11/21/sagarmala-project-serious-concerns- being-raised-about-environmental-effects-on-coastal-areas/>

35 Flyvbjerg, B. What You Should Know About Megaprojects, and Why: An Overview. 2014 <https:// arxiv.org/pdf/1409.0003.pdf>

Conjuncted: Banking – The Collu(i)sion of Housing and Stock Markets

There are two main aspects we are to look at here as regards banking. The first aspect is the link between banking and houses. In most countries, lending of money is done on basis of property, especially houses. As collateral for the mortgage, often houses are used. If the value of the house increases, more money can be borrowed from the banks and more money can be injected into society. More investments are generally good for a country. It is therefore of prime importance for a country to keep the house prices high.

The way this is done, is by facilitating borrowing of money, for instance by fiscal stimulation. Most countries have a tax break on mortgages. This, while the effect for the house buyers of these tax breaks is absolutely zero. That is because the price of a house is determined on the market by supply and demand. If neither the supply nor the demand is changing, the price will be fixed by ‘what people can afford’. Imagine there are 100 houses for sale and 100 buyers. Imagine the price on the market will wind up being 100000 Rupees, with a mortgage payment (3% interest rate) being 3 thousand Rupees per year, exactly what people can afford. Now imagine that government makes a tax break for buyers stipulating that they get 50% of the mortgage payment back from the state in a way of fiscal refund. Suddenly, the buyers can afford 6 thousand Rupees per year and the price on the market of the house will rise to 200 thousand Rupees. The net effect for the buyer is zero. Yet, the price of the house has doubled, and this is a very good incentive for the economy. This is the reason why nearly all governments have tax breaks for home owners.

Yet, another way of driving the price of houses up is by reducing the supply. Socialist countries made it a strong point on their agenda that having a home is a human right. They try to build houses for everybody. And this causes the destruction of the economy. Since the supply of houses is so high that the value drops too much, the possibility of investment based on borrowing money with the house as collateral is severely reduced and a collapse of economy is unavoidable. Technically speaking, it is of extreme simplicity to build a house to everybody. Even a villa or a palace. Yet, implementing this idea will imply a recession in economy, since modern economies are based on house prices. It is better to cut off the supply (destroy houses) to help the economy.

The next item of banking is the stock holders. It is often said that the stock market is the axis-of-evil of a capitalist society. Indeed, the stock owners will get the profit of the capital, and the piling up of money will eventually be at the stock owners. However, it is not so that the stock owners are the evil people that care only about money. It is principally the managers that are the culprits. Mostly bank managers.

To give you an example. Imagine I have 2% of each of the three banks, State Bank, Best Bank and Credit Bank. Now imagine that the other 98% of the stock of each bank is placed at the other two banks. State Bank is thus 49% owner of Best Bank, and 49% owner of Credit Bank. In turn, State Bank is owned for 49% by Best Bank and for 49% by Credit Bank. The thing is that I am the full 100% owner of all three banks. As an example, I own directly 2% of State Bank. But I also own 2% of two banks that each own 49% of this bank. And I own 2% of banks that own 49% of banks that own 49% of State Bank. This series adds to 100%. I am the full 100% owner of State Bank. And the same applies to Best Bank and Credit Bank. This is easy to see, since there do not exist other stock owners of the three banks. These banks are fully mine. However, if I go to a stockholders meeting, I will be outvoted on all subjects. Especially on the subject of financial reward for the manager. If today the 10-million-Rupees salary of Arundhati Bhatti of State Bank is discussed, it will get 98% of the votes, namely those of Gautum Ambani representing Best Bank and Mukesh Adani of Credit Bank. They vote in favor, because next week is the stockholders meeting of their banks. This game only ends when Mukesh Adani will be angry with Arundhati Bhatti.

This structure, placing stock at each other’s company is a form of bypassing the stock holders

– the owners – and allow for plundering of a company.

There is a side effect which is as beneficial as the one above. Often, the general manager’s salary is based on a bonus-system; the better a bank performs, the higher the salary of the manager. This high performance can easily be bogus. Imagine the above three banks. The profit it distributed over the shareholders in the form of dividend. Imagine now that each bank makes 2 million profit on normal business operations. Each bank can easily emit 100 million profit in dividend without loss! For example, State Bank distributes 100 million: 2 million to me, 49 million to Best Bank and 49 million to Credit Bank. From these two banks it also gets 49 million Rupees each. Thus, the total flux of money is only 2 million Rupees.

Shareholders often use as a rule-of thumb a target share price of 20 times the dividend. This because that implies a 5% ROI and slightly better than putting the money at a bank (which anyway invests it in that company, gets 5%, and gives you 3%). However, the dividend can be highly misleading. 2 million profit is made, 100 million dividend is paid. Each bank uses this trick. The general managers can present beautiful data and get a fat bonus.

The only thing stopping this game is taxing. What if government decides to put 25% tax on dividend? Suddenly a bank has to pay 25 million where it made only 2 million real profit. The three banks claimed to have made 300 million profit in total, while they factually only made 6 million; the rest came from passing money around to each other. They have to pay 75 million dividend tax. How will they manage?! That is why government gives banks normally a tax break on dividend (except for small stockholders like me). Governments that like to see high profits, since it also fabricates high GDP and thus guarantees low interest rates on their state loans.

Actually, even without taxing, how will they manage to continue presenting nice data in a year where no profit is made on banking activity?

Banking? There isn’t much to it than this anyways.

Don’t go by the innocuous sounding title, for this is at its wit alternative. The modus operandi (Oh!, how much I feel like saying modis operandi in honor of the you Indians know who?) for accumulation of wealth to parts of ‘the system’ (which, for historic reasons, we call ‘capitalists’) is banking. The ‘capitalists’ (defined as those that skim the surplus labor of others) accumulate it through the banking system. That is nearly an empty statement, since wealth = money. That is, money is the means of increasing wealth and thus one represents the other. If capitalists skim surplus labor, it means that they skim surplus money. Money is linked to (only!) banks, and thus, accumulation is in the banks.

If interest is charged, borrowers will go bankrupt. This idea can be extended. If interest is charged, all money is accumulated in banks. Or, better to say, a larger and larger fraction of money is accumulated in the banks, and kept in financial institutions. The accumulation of wealth is accumulation of money in and by banks. It can only be interesting to see whom the money belongs to.

By the way, these institutions, the capitalists naturally wanting to part with as little as possible from this money, are often in fiscal paradises. Famous are The Cayman Islands, The Bahamas, The Seychelles, etc. With the accumulated money the physical property is bought. Once again, this is an empty statement. Money represents buying power (to buy more wealth). For instance buying the means-of-production (the Marxian mathematical equation raises its head again, MoP), such as land, factories, people’s houses (which will then be rented to them; more money). Etc.

Also, a tiny fraction of the money is squandered. It is what normally draws most attention. Oil sheiks that drive golden cars, bunga-bunga parties etc. That, however, is rather insignificant, this way of re-injecting money into the system. Mostly money is used to increase capital. That is why it is an obvious truth that “When you are rich, you must be extremely stupid to become poor. When you are poor, you must be extremely talented to become rich”. When you are rich, just let the capital work for you; it will have the tendency to increase, even if it increases slower than that of your more talented neighbor.

To accelerate the effect of skimming, means of production (MoP, ‘capital’), are confiscated from everything – countries and individual people – that cannot pay the loan + interest (which is unavoidable). Or bought for a much-below market value price in a way of “Take it or leave it; either give me my money back, which I know there is no way you can, or give me all your possessions and options for confiscation of possessions of future generations as well, i.e., I’ll give you new loans (which you will also not be able to pay back, I know, but that way I’ll manage to forever take everything you will ever produce in your life and all generations after you. Slaves, obey your masters!)”

Although not essential (Marx analyzed it not like this), the banking system accelerates the condensation of wealth. It is the modus operandi. Money is accumulated. With that money, capital is bought and then the money is re-confiscated with that newly-bought capital, or by means of new loans, etc. It is a feedback system where all money and capital is condensing on a big pile. Money and capital are synonyms. Note that this pile in not necessarily a set of people. It is just ‘the system’. There is no ‘class struggle’ between rich and poor, where the latter are trying to steal/take-back the money (depending on which side of the alleged theft the person analyzing it is). It is a class struggle of people against ‘the system’.

There is only one stable final distribution: all money/capital belonging to one person or institute, one ‘entity’. That is what is called a ‘singularity’ and the only mathematical function that is stable in this case. It is called a delta-function, or Kronecker-delta function: zero everywhere, except in one point, where it is infinite, with the total integral (total money) equal to unity. In this case: all money on one big pile. All other functions are unstable.

Imagine that there are two brothers that wound up with all the money and the rest of the people are destitute and left without anything. These two brothers will then start lending things to each-other. Since they are doing this in the commercial way (having to give back more than borrowed), one of the brothers will confiscate everything from the other.
Note: There is only one way out of it, namely that the brother ‘feels sorry’ for his sibling and gives him things without anything in return, to compensate for the steady unidirectional flow of wealth….

Single Asset Optimal Investment Fraction

We first consider a situation, when an investor can spend a fraction of his capital to buy shares of just one risky asset. The rest of his money he keeps in cash.

Generalizing Kelly, we consider the following simple strategy of the investor: he regularly checks the asset’s current price p(t), and sells or buys some asset shares in order to keep the current market value of his asset holdings a pre-selected fraction r of his total capital. These readjustments are made periodically at a fixed interval, which we refer to as readjustment interval, and select it as the discrete unit of time. In this work the readjustment time interval is selected once and for all, and we do not attempt optimization of its length.

We also assume that on the time-scale of this readjustment interval the asset price p(t) undergoes a geometric Brownian motion:

p(t + 1) = e^η(t)p(t) —– (1)

i.e. at each time step the random number η(t) is drawn from some probability distribution π(η), and is independent of it’s value at previous time steps. This exponential notation is particularly convenient for working with multiplicative noise, keeping the necessary algebra at minimum. Under these rules of dynamics the logarithm of the asset’s price, ln p(t), performs a random walk with an average drift v = ⟨η⟩ and a dispersion D = ⟨η²⟩ − ⟨η⟩².

It is easy to derive the time evolution of the total capital W(t) of an investor, following the above strategy:

W(t + 1) = (1 − r)W(t) + rW(t)e^η(t) —– (2)

Let us assume that the value of the investor’s capital at t = 0 is W(0) = 1. The evolution of the expectation value of the expectation value of the total capital ⟨W (t)⟩ after t time steps is obviously given by the recursion ⟨W (t + 1)⟩ = (1 − r + r⟨e^η⟩)⟨W (t)⟩. When ⟨e^η⟩ > 1, at first thought the investor should invest all his money in the risky asset. Then the expectation value of his capital would enjoy an exponential growth with the fastest growth rate. However, it would be totally unreasonable to expect that in a typical realization of price fluctuations, the investor would be able to attain the average growth rate determined as v_avg = d⟨W(t)⟩/dt. This is because the main contribution to the expectation value ⟨W(t)⟩ comes from exponentially unlikely outcomes, when the price of the asset after a long series of favorable events with η > ⟨η⟩ becomes exponentially big. Such outcomes lie well beyond reasonable fluctuations of W (t), determined by the standard deviation √Dt of ln W (t) around its average value ⟨ln W (t)⟩ = ⟨η⟩t. For the investor who deals with just one realization of the multiplicative process it is better not to rely on such unlikely events, and maximize his gain in a typical outcome of a process. To quantify the intuitively clear concept of a typical value of a random variable x, we define x_typ as a median of its distribution, i.e x_typ has the property that Prob(x > x_typ) = Prob(x < x_typ) = 1/2. In a multiplicative process (2) with r = 1, W (t + 1) = e^η(t)W (t), one can show that W_typ(t) – the typical value of W(t) – grows exponentially in time: W_typ(t) = e^⟨η⟩t at a rate vtyp = ⟨η⟩, while the expectation value ⟨W(t)⟩ also grows exponentially as ⟨W(t)⟩ = ⟨e^η⟩t, but at a faster rate given by v_avg = ln⟨e^η⟩. Notice that ⟨lnW(t)⟩ always grows with the typical growth rate, since those very rare outcomes when W (t) is exponentially big, do not make significant contribution to this average.

The question we are going to address is: which investment fraction r provides the investor with the best typical growth rate v_typ of his capital. Kelly has answered this question for a particular realization of multiplicative stochastic process, where the capital is multiplied by 2 with probability q > 1/2, and by 0 with probability p = 1 − q. This case is realized in a gambling game, where betting on the right outcome pays 2:1, while you know the right outcome with probability q > 1/2. In our notation this case corresponds to η being equal to ln 2 with probability q and −∞ otherwise. The player’s capital in Kelly’s model with r = 1 enjoys the growth of expectation value ⟨W(t)⟩ at a rate v_avg = ln2q > 0. In this case it is however particularly clear that one should not use maximization of the expectation value of the capital as the optimum criterion. If the player indeed bets all of his capital at every time step, sooner or later he will loose everything and would not be able to continue to play. In other words, r = 1 corresponds to the worst typical growth of the capital: asymptotically the player will be bankrupt with probability 1. In this example it is also very transparent, where the positive average growth rate comes from: after T rounds of the game, in a very unlikely (Prob = q^T) event that the capital was multiplied by 2 at all times (the gambler guessed right all the time!), the capital is equal to 2^T. This exponentially large value of the capital outweighs exponentially small probability of this event, and gives rise to an exponentially growing average. This would offer condolence to a gambler who lost everything.

We generalize Kelly’s arguments for arbitrary distribution π(η). As we will see this generalization reveals some hidden results, not realized in Kelly’s “betting” game. As we learned above, the growth of the typical value of W(t), is given by the drift of ⟨lnW(t)⟩ = v_typt, which in our case can be written as

v_typ(r) = ∫ dη π(η) ln(1 + r(e^η − 1)) —– (3)

One can check that v_typ(0) = 0, since in this case the whole capital is in the form of cash and does not change in time. In another limit one has v_typ(1) = ⟨η⟩, since in this case the whole capital is invested in the asset and enjoys it’s typical growth rate (⟨η⟩ = −∞ for Kelly’s case). Can one do better by selecting 0 < r < 1? To find the maximum of v_typ(r) one differentiates (3) with respect to r and looks for a solution of the resulting equation: 0 = v’_typ(r) = ∫ dη π(η) (e^η −1)/(1+r(e^η −1)) in the interval 0 ≤ r ≤ 1. If such a solution exists, it is unique since v′′_typ(r) = − ∫ dη π(η) (e^η − 1)² / (1 + r(e^η − 1))² < 0 everywhere. The values of the v’_typ(r) at 0 and 1 are given by v’_typ(0) = ⟨e^η⟩ − 1, and v’_typ(1) = 1−⟨e^−η⟩. One has to consider three possibilities:

(1) ⟨e^η⟩ is realized at r = 0 and is equal to 0. In other words, one should never invest in an asset with negative average return per capital ⟨e^η⟩ − 1 < 0.

(2) ⟨e^η⟩ > 1 , and ⟨e^−η⟩ > 1. In this case v’_typ(0) > 0, but v’_typ(1) < 0 and the maximum of v(r) is realized at some 0 < r < 1, which is a unique solution to v’_typ(r) = 0. The typical growth rate in this case is always positive (because you could have always selected r = 0 to make it zero), but not as big as the average rate ln⟨e^η⟩, which serves as an unattainable ideal limit. An intuitive understanding of why one should select r < 1 in this case comes from the following observation: the condition ⟨e^−η⟩ > 1 makes ⟨1/p(t)⟩ to grow exponentially in time. Such an exponential growth indicates that the outcomes with very small p(t) are feasible and give dominant contribution to ⟨1/p(t)⟩. This is an indicator that the asset price is unstable and one should not trust his whole capital to such a risky investment.

(3) ⟨e^η⟩ > 1 , and ⟨e^−η⟩ < 1. This is a safe asset and one can invest his whole capital in it. The maximum v_typ(r) is achieved at r = 1 and is equal to v_typ(1) = ln⟨η⟩. A simple example of this type of asset is one in which the price p(t) with equal probabilities is multiplied by 2 or by a = 2/3. As one can see this is a marginal case in which ⟨1/p(t)⟩ = const. For a < 2/3 one should invest only a fraction r < 1 of his capital in the asset, while for a ≥ 2/3 the whole sum could be trusted to it. The specialty of the case with a = 2/3 cannot not be guessed by just looking at the typical and average growth rates of the asset! One has to go and calculate ⟨e^−η⟩ to check if ⟨1/p(t)⟩ diverges. This “reliable” type of asset is a new feature of the model with a general π(η). It is never realized in Kelly’s original model, which always has ⟨η⟩ = −∞, so that it never makes sense to gamble the whole capital every time.

An interesting and somewhat counterintuitive consequence of the above results is that under certain conditions one can make his capital grow by investing in asset with a negative typical growth rate ⟨η⟩ < 0. Such asset certainly loses value, and its typical price experiences an exponential decay. Any investor bold enough to trust his whole capital in such an asset is losing money with the same rate. But as long as the fluctuations are strong enough to maintain a positive average return per capital ⟨e^η⟩ − 1 > 0) one can maintain a certain fraction of his total capital invested in this asset and almost certainly make money! A simple example of such mind-boggling situation is given by a random multiplicative process in which the price of the asset with equal probabilities is doubled (goes up by 100%) or divided by 3 (goes down by 66.7%). The typical price of this asset drifts down by 18% each time step. Indeed, after T time steps one could reasonably expect the price of this asset to be p_typ(T) = 2^T/2 3^−T/2 = (√2/3)T ≃ 0.82^T. On the other hand, the average ⟨p(t)⟩ enjoys a 17% growth ⟨p(t + 1)⟩ = 7/6 ⟨p(t)⟩ ≃ 1.17⟨W (t)⟩. As one can easily see, the optimum of the typical growth rate is achieved by maintaining a fraction r = 1/4 of the capital invested in this asset. The typical rate in this case is a meager √(25/24) ≃ 1.02, meaning that in a long run one almost certainly gets a 2% return per time step, but it is certainly better than losing 18% by investing the whole capital in this asset.

Of course the properties of a typical realization of a random multiplicative process are not fully characterized by the drift v_typ(r)t in the position of the center of mass of P(h,t), where h(t) = lnW(t) is a logarithm of the wealth of the investor. Indeed, asymptotically P (h, t) has a Gaussian shape P (h, t) =1/ (√2π D(r)t) (exp(^{−(h−vtyp(r)t)2)/(2D(r)t)}, where v_typ(r) is given by eq. (3). One needs to know the dispersion D(r) to estimate √D(r)t, which is the magnitude of characteristic deviations of h(t) away from its typical value h_typ(t) = v_typt. At the infinite time horizon t → ∞, the process with the biggest v_typ(r) will certainly be preferable over any other process. This is because the separation between typical values of h(t) for two different investment fractions r grows linearly in time, while the span of typical fluctuations grows only as a √t. However, at a finite time horizon the investor should take into account both v_typ(r) and D(r) and decide what he prefers: moderate growth with small fluctuations or faster growth with still bigger fluctuations. To quantify this decision one needs to introduce an investor’s “utility function” which we will not attempt in this work. The most conservative players are advised to always keep their capital in cash, since with any other arrangement the fluctuations will certainly be bigger. As a rule one can show that the dispersion D(r) = ∫ π(η) ln²[1 + r(e^η − 1)]dη − v²_typ monotonically increases with r. Therefore, among two solutions with equal v_typ(r) one should always select the one with a smaller r, since it would guarantee smaller fluctuations. Here it is more convenient to switch to the standard notation. It is customary to use the random variable

Λ(t)= (p(t+1)−p(t))/p(t) = e^η(t) −1 —– (4)

which is referred to as return per unit capital of the asset. The properties of a random multiplicative process are expressed in terms of the average return per capital α = ⟨Λ⟩ = ⟨e^η⟩ − 1, and the volatility (standard deviation) of the return per capital σ = √(⟨Λ²⟩ – ⟨Λ⟩². In our notation, α = ⟨e^η⟩ – 1, is determined by the average and not typical growth rate of the process. For η ≪ 1 , α ≃ v + D/2 + v²/2, while the volatility σ is related to D ( the dispersion of η) through σ ≃ √D.

Expanding Eq. (3) up to the second order in Λ = e^η − 1 one gets: v_typ ≃ ⟨r(e^η − 1) − r²(e^η − 1)²⟩ = αr − (σ² + α²)r²/2. The optimal r is given by

r_opt = α / (α² + σ²) —– (5)

If the above formula prescribes r_opt > 1, the investor is advised to trust his whole capital to this asset. We remind you that in this paper the risk-free return per capital is set to zero (investor keeps the rest of his capital in cash). In a more realistic case, when a risk-free bank deposit brings a return p during a single readjustment interval, the formula for the optimal investment ratio should be generalized to:

r_opt= (α−p) / (α2 + σ2) —– (6)

In a hypothetical case discussed by Merton, when asset’s price follows a continuous multiplicative random walk (i.e. price fluctuations are uncorrelated at the smallest time scale) and the investor is committed to adjust his investment ratio on a continuous basis, one should use infinitesimal quantities α → αdt and σ² → σ²dt. Under these circumstances the term α²dt², being second order in infinitesimal time increment dt, should be dropped from the denominator. Then one recovers an optimal investment fraction for “logarithmic utility” derived by Merton.

 

 

Data Governance, FinTech, #Blockchain and Audits (Upcoming Bangalore Talk)

This is skeletal and I am febrile, and absolutely nowhere near being punctilious. The idea is to note if this economic/financial revolution, (could it even be called that?) could politically be an overtone window? So, let this be otiose and information disseminating, for a paper is on its way forcing down greater attention to detail and vastly different from here. 

Data Governance and Audit Trail

Data Governance specifies the framework for decision rights and accountabilities encouraging desirable behavior in data usage

Main aim of Data Governance is to ensure that data asset are overseen in a cohesive and consistent enterprise-wide manner

Why is there a need for Data governance? 

Evolving regulatory mechanisms and requirements

Could integrity of data be trusted?

Centralized versus decentralized documentation as regards use, hermeneutics and meaning of data

Multiplicity of data silos with exponentially rising data

Architecture

Information Owner: approving power towards internal + external data transfers + business plans prioritizing data integrity and data governance

Data steward: create/maintain/define data access, data mapping and data aggregation rules

Application steward: maintain application inventory, validating testing of outbound data and assist master data management

Analytics steward: maintain a solutions inventory, reduce redundant solutions, define rules for use of standard definitions and report documentation guidelines, and define data release processes and guidelines

What could an audit be?

It starts as a comprehensive and effective program encompassing people, processes, policies, controls, and technology. Additionally, it involves educating key stakeholders about the benefits and risks associated with poor data quality, integrity and security.

What should be audit invested with?

Apart from IT knowledge and operational aspects of the organization, PR skills, dealing with data-related risks and managing a push-back or a cultural drift handling skills are sine qua non. As we continue to operate in one of the toughest and most uneven economic climates in modern times, the relevance of the role of auditors in the financial markets is more important than ever before. While the profession has long recognized the impact of data analysis on enhancing the quality and relevance of the audit, mainstream use of this technique has been hampered due to a lack of efficient technology solutions, problems with data capture and concerns about privacy. However, recent technology advancements in big data and analytics are providing an opportunity to rethink the way in which an audit is executed. The transformed audit will expand beyond sample-based testing to include analysis of entire populations of audit-relevant data (transaction activity and master data from key business processes), using intelligent analytics to deliver a higher quality of audit evidence and more relevant business insights. Big data and analytics are enabling auditors to better identify financial reporting, fraud and operational business risks and tailor their approach to deliver a more relevant audit. While we are making significant progress and are beginning to see the benefits of big data and analytics in the audit, this is only part of a journey. What we really want is to have intelligent audit appliances that reside within companies’ data centers and stream the results of our proprietary analytics to audit teams. But the technology to accomplish this vision is still in its infancy and, in the interim, what is transpiring is delivering audit analytics by processing large client data sets within a set and systemic environment, integrating analytics into audit approach and getting companies comfortable with the future of audit. The transition to this future won’t happen overnight. It’s a massive leap to go from traditional audit approaches to one that fully integrates big data and analytics in a seamless manner.

Three key areas the audit committee and finance leadership should be thinking about now when it comes to big data and analytics:

External audit: develop a better understanding of how analytics is being used in the audit today. Since data capture is a key barrier, determine the scope of data currently being captured, and the steps being taken by the company’s IT function and its auditor to streamline data capture.

Compliance and risk management: understand how internal audit and compliance functions are using big data and analytics today, and management’s future plans. These techniques can have a significant impact on identifying key risks and automating the monitoring processes.

Competency development: the success of any investments in big data and analytics will be determined by the human element. Focus should not be limited to developing technical competencies, but should extend to creating the analytical mindset within the finance, risk and compliance functions to consume the analytics produced effectively.

What is the India Stack?

A paperless and cashless delivery system; a paradigm that is intended to handle massive data inflows enabling entrepreneurs, citizens and government to interact with each other transparently; an open system to verify businesses, people and services.

This is an open API policy that was conceived in 2012 to build upon Aadhaar. The word open in the policy signifies that other application could access data. It is here that the affair starts getting a bit murky, as India Stack gives the data to the concerned individual and lets him/her decide who the data can be shared with.

So, is this a Fintech? Fintech is usually applies to the segment of technology startup scene that is disrupting sectors such as mobile payments, money transfers, loans, fundraising and even asset management. And what is the guarantee that Fintech would help prevent fraud that traditional banking couldn’t? No technology can completely eradicate fraud and human deceit, but I believe technology can make operations more transparent and systems more accountable. To illustrate this point, let’s look back at the mortgage crisis of 2008.

Traditional banks make loans the old fashioned way: they take money from people at certain rates (savings deposits) and lend it out the community at a higher rate. The margin constitutes the bank’s profit. As the bank’s assets grow, so do their loans, enabling them to grow organically.

Large investment banks bundle assets into securities that they can sell on open markets all over the world. Investors trust these securities because they are rated by third party agencies such as Moody’s and Standard & Poor’s. Buyers include pension funds, hedge funds, and many other retail investment instruments.

The ratings agencies are paid by investment banks to rate them. Unfortunately, they determine these ratings not so much by the merits of the securities themselves, but according to the stipulations of the banks. If a rating fails to meet the investment banks’ expectations, they can take their business to another rating agency. If a security does not perform as per the rating, the agency has no liability! How insane is that?

Most surprisingly, investment banks can hedge against the performance of these securities (perhaps because they know that the rating is total BS?) through a complex process that I will not get into here.

Investment banks and giant insurance firms such as AIG were the major dominoes that nearly caused the whole financial system to topple in 2008. Today we face an entirely different lending industry, thanks to FinTech. What is FinTech? FinTech refers to a financial services company (not a technology company) that uses superior technology to bring newer and better financial products to consumers. Many of today’s FinTech companies call themselves technology companies or big data companies, but I respectfully disagree. To an outsider, a company is defined by its balance sheet and a FinTech company’s balance sheet will tell you that it makes money from the fees, interest, and service charges on their assets—not by selling or licensing technology. FinTech is good news not only for the investors, borrowers and banks collectively, but also for the financial services industry as a whole because it ensures greater transparency and accountability while removing risk from the entire system. In the past four to five years a number of FinTech companies have gained notoriety for their impact on the industry. I firmly believe that this trend has just begun. FinTech companies are ushering in new digital business models such as auto-decisioning. These models are sweeping through thousands of usual and not-so-usual data sources for KYC and Credit Scoring.

But already a new market of innovative financial products has entered into mainstream finance. As their market share grows these FinTech companies will gradually “de-risk” the system by mitigating the impact of large, traditional, single points of failure. And how will the future look? A small business might take its next business loan from Lending Club, OnDeck, Kabbage, or DealStruck, instead of a traditional bank. Rather than raising funds from a venture capital firm or other traditional investor, small businesses can now look to Kickstarter or CircleUp. Sales transactions can be processed with fewer headaches by Square or Stripe. You can invest your money at Betterment or Wealthfront and not have to pay advisors who have questionable track records outperforming the market. You can even replace money with bitcoin using Coinbase, Circle, or another digital-currency option. These are the by-products of the FinTech revolution. We are surrounded by a growing ecosystem of highly efficient FinTech companies that deliver next-generation financial products in a simple, hassle-free manner. Admittedly, today’s emerging FinTech companies have not had to work through a credit cycle or contend with rising interest rates. But those FinTech companies that have technology in their DNA will learn to ‘pivot’ when the time comes and figure it all out. We have just seen the tip of this iceberg. Technically speaking, the FinTech companies aren’t bringing anything revolutionary to the table. Mostly it feels like ‘an efficiency gain’ play and a case of capitalizing on the regulatory arbitrage that non-banks enjoy. Some call themselves big data companies—but any major bank can look into its data center and make the same claim. Some say that they use 1,000 data points. Banks are doing that too, albeit manually and behind closed walls, just as they have done for centuries. FinTechs simplify financial processes, reduce administrative drag, and deliver better customer service. They bring new technology to an old and complacent industry. Is there anything on the horizon that can truly revolutionize how this industry works? Answering this question brings us back to 2008 as we try to understand what really happened. What if there was a system that did not rely on Moody’s and S&P to rate the bonds, corporations, and securities. What if technology could provide this information in an accurate and transparent manner. What if Bitcoin principles were adopted widely in this industry? What if the underlying database protocol, Blockchain, could be used to track all financial transactions all over the globe to tell you the ‘real’ rating of a security.

Blockchain can be defined as a peer-to-peer operated public digital ledger that records all transactions executed for a particular asset (…) “The Blockchain maintains this record across a network of computers, and anyone on the network can access the ledger. Blockchain is ‘decentralised’ meaning people on the network maintain the ledger, requiring no central or third party intermediary involvement.” “Users known as ‘miners’ use specialised software to look for these time stamped ‘blocks’, verify their accuracy using a special algorithm, and add the block to the chain. The chain maintains chronological order for all blocks added because of these time-stamps.” The digitalisation of financial service opens room for new opportunity such as to propose new kind of consumer’s experience as well as the use of new technologies and improve business data analysis. The ACPR, the French banking and insurance regulatory authority, has  classified the opportunities and risks linked to the Fintech such as the new services for uses, better resilience versus the difficulty to establish effective supervision, the risks of regulation dumping and regarding clients interest protection such as data misuse and security. The French Central Bank is currently studying blockchain in cooperation with two start-ups, the “Labo Blockchain” and “Blockchain France”. In that context, blockchain is a true financial service disruption, according to Piper Alderman “Blockchain can perform the intermediating function in a cheaper and more secure way, and disrupt the role of Banks.”

Hence, leading bank wants to seize that financial service opportunity. They are currently working on blockchain project with financial innovation firm, R3 CEV. The objective is that the project delivers a “more efficient and cost-effective international settlement network and possibly eliminate the need to rely on central bank”. R3 CEV has announced that 40 peer banks, including HSBC, Citigroup, and BNP Paribas, started an initiative to test new kind of transaction through blockchain. This consortium is the most important ever organized to test this new technology.

And what of security? According to the experts “the design of the blockchain means there is the possibility of malware being injected and permanently hosted with no methods currently available to wipe this data. This could affect ‘cyber hygiene’ as well as the sharing of child sexual abuse images where the blockchain could become a safe haven for hosting such data.” Further, according to the research, “it could also enable crime scenarios in the future such as the deployment of modular malware, a reshaping of the distribution of zero-day attacks, as well as the creation of illegal underground marketplaces dealing in private keys which would allow access to this data.” The issue of cyber-security for financial institutions is very strategic. Firstly, as these institutions rely on customer confidence they are particularly vulnerable to data loss and fraud. Secondly, banks represent a key sector for national security. Thirdly they are exposed to credit crisis given their role to finance economy. Lastly, data protection is a key challenge given financial security legal requirements.

As regard cyber security risks, on of the core legal challenge will be the accountability issue. As Blockchain is grounded on anonymity the question is who would be accountable for the actions pursued? Should it be the users, the Blockchain owner, or software engineer? Regulation will address the issue of blockchain governance. According to Hubert de Vauplane, “the more the Blockchain is open and public, less the Blockchain is governed”, “while in a private Blockchain, the governance is managed by the institution” as regard “access conditions, working, security and legal approval of transactions”. Where as in the public Blockchain, there is no other rules that Blockchain, or in other words “Code is Law” to quote US legal expert Lawrence Lessing. First issue: who is the block chain user? Two situations must be addressed depending if the Blockchain is private or public. Unlike public blockchain, the private blockchain – even though grounded in a public source code – is protected by intellectual property rights in favour of the organism that manages it, but still exposed to cyber security risks. Moreover, a new contractual documentation provided by financial institutions and disclosure duty could be necessary when consumers may simply not understand the information on how their data may be used through this new technology.

‘Disruption’ has turned into a Silicon Valley cliché, something not only welcomed, but often listed as a primary goal. But disruption in the private sector can have remarkably different effects than in the political system. While capital forces may allow for relatively rapid adaptation in the market, complex political institutions can be slower to react. Moreover, while disruption in an economic market can involve the loss of some jobs and the creation of others, disruption in politics can result in political instability, armed conflict, increased refugee flows and humanitarian crises. It nevertheless is the path undertaken….