Sinking ship More focus needed
In the article, “Why I don’t see huge value in AI” (October 17), Anjali Bhargava has made some pertinent observations about the inside story of the debt-ridden national carrier.
The twin fundamental problems highlighted by her could possibly be behind Air India’s worrisome state of affairs. However, her suggestion that “if Air India could be sold without all its employees, I’d be far more upbeat about the chances of success about its inherent value” seems largely out of sync and, perhaps, impractical, too.
Of course, Air India has been the fiefdom of most political bigwigs, apart from some top-ranking bureaucrats. The failure of its “hands tied” management to rise to the occasion and the indifferent attitude of its ground staff have worsened problems. No wonder the once reputed “Maharaja” has failed to cope with the cutthroat competition in the civil aviation sector. Who will board (read: own) this financially sinking ship is a mystery.
S Kumar New Delhi down further if gold imports from FTAconcluded countries are minimised to remove this item from FTAs altogether.
High-volume and high-value gold imports are widening the gap between exports and imports, causing harm to the country’s CAD numbers. Although some steps were taken by the commerce ministry, more regulations are needed. The commerce minister should look into this aspect now.
Export figures for labour-intensive sectors such as those producing fruits, vegetables and handicrafts are dismal. Exports of fruits and vegetables are down because of tightened norms on the import of these products in countries such as Oman and Saudi Arabia.
The Export Promotion Council for Handicrafts blamed GST woes mainly for the slowdown in exports in the last 100 days. Now that GST hurdles have been removed, handicraft exporters can focus on efforts to push their exports up.
An important issue the commerce minister should address is how to make export financing easy. A few months ago, the Export Credit Guarantee Corporation of India had restored letter of credit factoring by earmarking around ~60 crore to grant credit against LC factoring to exporters. But this amount is too small to meet credit requirements. It is time the facility is extended to all exporters and the amount increased. This would help exports grow as this will likely facilitate working capital requirement of this class of exporters. Amara Sathya via email Non-performing assets (NPA) in the Indian banking sector have never assumed such alarming proportions as they are doing at present.
Several banks have gross NPA ratios running into double digits — a big worry. The State Bank of India has decided to create a special division headed by a person of the rank of managing director to exclusively deal with stressed loans.
The government and the Reserve Bank of India are seized of the matter, but more focused efforts are necessary to resolve this issue within a time frame.
Srinivasan Umashankar Nagpur