Elections 2019: Privatisation Only Way To Meet Fiscal Targets, Says Manish Chokhani
India needs land and labour reforms in the next two months and must step up urbanisation to solve the agrarian crisis, according to Manish Chokhani, director at Enam Holdings.
“Most economies have less than 10 percent of their population directly involved in farming and everybody else moves into secondary and tertiary sectors,” he told BloombergQuint in an interview. “India can’t be the only country saying that in a commodity sector where prices are structurally trending down globally, we not only want to support them and give them higher prices, but also want to let it remain fragmented instead of consolidating the sector. That should change.”
Also, interest rates must be lowered, he said. “In a world of negative interest rates, India can’t afford to pay such usurious rates.”
But he advises against missing fiscal targets. And to provide much-needed capital, Chokhani advocates privatisation.
“We are holding assets of a trillion dollars on one hand, which barely yield 2 percent return, and paying interest which aggregates to roughly one-third of the total revenues. This completely foxes me,” Chokhani said. “If India were a company, you would have sacked the CEO and the CFO.”
On Equity Markets
Chokhani said while the markets have remained narrow of late, if India can boost exports, industry and consumption, the boom will be more broad-based. If not, then investors will fall back on the income J-Curve of India, which would lead to consumption-oriented stocks being bought.