Wednesday, August 26, 1998
The RIB bonanza
Resurgent India Bonds (RIBs) have been a success. After some nail-biting about the volume of subscription these would garner -- $2 billion or $3 billion -- the actual subscription is reckoned to have crossed the $4 billion mark. The Indian diaspora has boosted morale, which was depressed by sanctions and downgrading by foreign rating agencies. RIBs are a new channel of forex inflow; the discovery calls for celebration.
A Welcome step
The Reserve Bank of India's (RBI's) setting up a panel to frame guidelines for write-off and compromise settlements on bad loans is to be welcomed. Rating agency Standard & Poor's had pointed out that the non-performing assets (NPAs) of the domestic banking sector would burgeon if international standards of classifying NPAs were to be followed here.
Small is beautiful
Reports indicate that the Indian subsidiary of the $11.9-billion US pharmaceutical company, Abbott Inc, is becoming a small-scale unit. While the move looks absurd, the rationale for classifying its Indian manufacturing facility as "small scale" makes eminent commercial sense. That is because many pharmaceutical products manufactured in India are under the Drug Price Control Order (DPCO).
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