2G Judgement
Two Judges of the Supreme Court have passed the Judgement which has said that there was a 2G scam and have given their reasons.
Everybody is happy with the judgement – Prashant Bhushan, Anna Hazare, Raja, NDA, etc. So far so good.
Let us see what was (should be?) the government’s role in Infrastructure development? Should it be revenue generation (so that the money is used to reduce the budget deficit) or making infra available to all and sundry?
Frankly I do not know.
One thing the telecom industry has done is – it has dramatically increased tele-density which 50 years of BSNL, MTNL, DoT could not do. Who paid the price for this? The telecom companies – they did make huge losses in the early years.
Sure they are now profitable (volumes are really huge) and people all over the country have access to a reasonably well regulated, private sector participating service where all customers are reasonably happy.
Let us look at what the RBI has done over the past 60+ years of its existence!
Do all the people have access to bank products? what about wealth products? what about a simple bond index fund or equity index fund by one of the banks which can be sold?
Banking licenses are not sold (chuckle chuckle) – either by auction or otherwise. However would I have bought the shares of Kotak bank or Indusind bank WITHOUT the license? I doubt it.
So the license should be priced? Say at 10% of the market capitalization ON LISTING.
We have more banks than telecom companies. We have private sector players, public sector players and an old regulator- been there for 50+ years.
A regulator need not make profits – but the end service should be affordable. There must be development work by the regulator (the market leader in sheer selfishness should ensure market penetration).
Chuckle chuckle where is the scam in terms of missed opportunities? RBI, Sebi or TRAI ?
Praveen
Just two years back there are these MFI’s which took loan giving to poor man’s house but at a whooping interest rate which are more then rich man’s credit card interest. At that time even the Corporate sector/media and every else hailed them that the MFI’s are helping the poor a lot., then within a shortspan these MFI’s became vilans and were accused by everybody.
pravin
@praveen. why are you surprised that the poor man has to pay an higher interest rate than a rich man? it is pretty reasonable and prudent behaviour.
all other things equal, the poor person is a higher credit risk because of his highly risky income flows.
the Grameen MFI was exposed when it was discovered that it used bangla and Norwegian money to paper over the NPAs it had accumulated.
lets leave the emotional factor out of lending.you lend because you want the money back safely with some return.you’d rather lend to someone who doesnt need the cash desperately.
ofcourse,i am not including bailouts for the rich by the govt here.that is outright fraud.
but the fact that the poor have higher credit risk should not be difficult to accept
Praveen
@pravin When an local money lender lends at 30% P.A interest rate he was called LOAN SHARK., but when an MFI lends at that rate then everybody will realize credit risk, cost to disburse loan to homes NPA’s & everything else to justify the high interest rate!!!!
T K VANI
when corporates likes kingfisher etc are loaned money at lesser rates , I am amused when the poor are called credit risk.Povety premium perhaps!!