Foreign exchange reserves rose $899 million to touch $285.1 billion during the week ended January 15, largely on account of revaluation of
non-dollar assets in reserves.
The latest figures released by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) on Friday indicate that the total foreign exchange reserves comprising foreign currency assets, gold and special drawing rights (SDR — reserves currency with the International Monetary Fund) rose $853 million reflecting valuation gains in non-dollar assets. The value of SDR and the reserve capital with the IMF rose $36 million and $10 million, respectively, during the week.
Economictimes
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Great news...right?
Now read this headline -
China Now Has Enough Cash Built Up To Buy 20% Of The S&P 500
Chinese foreign exchange reserves jumped 23.3% in 2009, hitting a mind-blowing $2.4 trillion notes 24/7 Wall St..
To put this into perspective, the S&P 500's total adjusted market cap is just $13.5 trillion according to the latest data sheet from Standard & Poor's. That means China's forex reserves could buy 18% of the S&P500.
Furthermore, if they were to keep growing at the current rate (even though they probably won't), within five years they could theoretically buy half of the S&P500. Now that could be some seriously massive fund flow, even if it isn't likely to happen or even possible.
Source:researchreloaded
Monday, January 25, 2010
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
Employment trends in India
Interesting article by Shankar Acharya (see below). Among a range of insights he also highlights the fact that the employment trends in India are difficult to capture due to unavailability of data- something I have time and again highlighted.
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India: Where are the jobs?
By Shankar Acharya
This piece is the first in an occasional series on the Indian economy.
What’s happening to employment in India? We know that every year there are nearly 13m new entrants into the nation’s labour force. Are they getting half-way decent employment opportunities? What proportion of the labour force is unemployed? How widespread is under-employment? What sort of job security do workers enjoy? What are the trends in real wages? The truth is we don’t know, at least not for any year after financial year 2004/5, the last year for which the National Sample Survey 61st Round gives reasonably good employment information.
Those inclined to paint a rosy picture point to the unprecedented, rapid growth of total employment at 2.9 per cent a year between 1999/2000 and 2004/5 (according to NSS data), which was far higher than the 1 per cent per annum growth recorded from 1993/4 to 1999/2000.
...more
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India: Where are the jobs?
By Shankar Acharya
This piece is the first in an occasional series on the Indian economy.
What’s happening to employment in India? We know that every year there are nearly 13m new entrants into the nation’s labour force. Are they getting half-way decent employment opportunities? What proportion of the labour force is unemployed? How widespread is under-employment? What sort of job security do workers enjoy? What are the trends in real wages? The truth is we don’t know, at least not for any year after financial year 2004/5, the last year for which the National Sample Survey 61st Round gives reasonably good employment information.
Those inclined to paint a rosy picture point to the unprecedented, rapid growth of total employment at 2.9 per cent a year between 1999/2000 and 2004/5 (according to NSS data), which was far higher than the 1 per cent per annum growth recorded from 1993/4 to 1999/2000.
...more
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