Indian_Oil

IndianOil, Bharat Petroleum Corporation and Hindustan Petroleum Corporation reported combined net losses of over Rs 40,500 crore in the first quarter of this fiscal. This wiped out half their net worth. Even after accounting for the diesel price hike and the mandatory one-third support from ONGC, Oil India and GAIL, the three refiners are expected to post combined losses of at least Rs 70,000 crore for the April-September period. This means, for BPCL and HPCL the net worth will wiped out, while IOC may “barely salvage something”. IOC, BPCL and HPCL believe that infrastructure-related spending could be anything upwards of Rs 150,000 crore over the next four years. “Where are we going to get the money from' If we don’t fix critical links in the supply chain, the country could go without petrol and diesel,” the official warned. S Kumars Nationwide’s US subsidiary HMX Acquisition Corp has filed a voluntary petition for bankruptcy (under Chapter 11) on October 19. HMX is into making tailored suits in the US. The Oil Ministry will seek over Rs 1,00,000 crore from the Finance Ministry this fiscal towards fuel subsidy, new Petroleum Minister M Veerappa Moily said on Monday. India has emerged as one of the top five investment destinations in the world, primarily on account of large market size and high customer potential, says a survey. The consulting firm BDO Global Market Opportunity Index 2012 covered more than 1,000 senior finance officers spread across 14 countries, including India, the US and the UK. The survey examines the views of the company’s finance chiefs to expand in specific countries. the survey said that the professional services and technology, media and telecoms (TMT) sectors are driving investment in the country. Growth and inflation growth was as important as inflation. Surely, the RBI would not deny that; it never has. But it has a mandate and limited instruments with which to fulfil its obligations. high interest rates have been identified a big villain because it is the socially most visible target of frustration felt by both policy planners and some stakeholders gnashing their teeth at declining GDP growth.To make matters worse, the RBI has played it both ways; it has cut CRR somewhat but it has also raised provisioning norms. By doing so it is fulfilling its other mandate in the best way it can: maintain the health of banks. Health of banks There’s some reason to be concerned there. Indian banks’ portfolio of stressed assets in steadily increasing. The RBI finds this disturbing and so should it be: at the end of March non-performing assets stood at 2.9 per cent of gross assets, climbing to 3.25 per cent in June. Part One of the Annual Report of the Reserve Bank of India says: “ Restructuring increased substantially during Q4 of 2011-12, taking the restructured loans at the end of 2011-12 to about 5 per cent of the loan book of the scheduled commercial banks (SCBs), up from 3.9 per cent a year ago.” A report on Global Employment Trends 2012 by the International Labour Organisation (ILO) says: “The robust growth witnessed in the region (South Asia), driven largely by India, has been mostly associated with a rapid rise in labour productivity rather than an expansion in employment.” Here’s the interesting part. Up until the end of the millennium, that is just a year before the balance of payments crisis and the onset of India’s liberalisation, “employment and labour productivity grew at similar rates.” Since 1991, “…increased labour productivity took over as the driver of growth in the region. Between 2007 and 2011, labour productivity increased by 6.4 per cent on average, while employment expanded by just 1.0 per cent. This situation is prominent in India, where total employment grew by only 0.1 per cent over the five years to 2009/10 As of March, the industry had accumulated total debt of Rs 1,85,720 crore, two and half times the debt four years earlier, according to estimates by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC). It expects the debt to rise to about Rs 4,00,000 crore by the end of March 2016, provided the coming 2G spectrum auction sees aggressive bidding and the government goes ahead with the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India’s recommendation to re-farm 900-MHz spectrum in 2014. In the last financial year, only three of the 11 active mobile operators reported net profits and only one operator (Bharti Airtel)’s return on capital employed (RoCE) was in double digits (13 per cent). Five years earlier, Bharti Airtel’s RoCE stood at 35 per cent, drawing investors to the company. In general, petrol car sales had declined by 20 per cent, while those of diesel vehicles had increased by 40 per cent between April and September