'The unabated growth in consumption of fuels is not healthy for the economy'

Has easing of price control made oil boil?

The task of pricing fuel in India would be equivalent to accomplishing the great Indian rope trick without a blemish. On one side are consumers (also the voters) and, on the other, are companies such as refiners, fuel marketers, etc. Can price control help?
At an OPEC meet organised in Saudi Arabia recently, the Finance Minister, Mr P. Chidambaram, suggested crude oil price be regulated by means of fixing a price band. While suggestions such as these may be borne out of sheer desperation for a country fighting with inflation at a 13-year high, experts see solid reason behind such a step, if implemented.
For one, volatility would be taken away and so would be the daily oil shock of the commodity surpassing one record after the other. "Oil producers or OPEC do not ostensibly exercise any price control. Slackening of control has actually commoditised crude even further," says Mr Deepak Mahurkar, Associate Director, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Gurgaon.

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'M&A activity will continue in the NBFC sector as more and more foreign players enter the market'

‘Banks now have greater ability to absorb credit losses’

Incomes have risen and so have lending rates. This has affected the borrower’s repayment capacity and today many banks are ‘less’ inclined to dole out consumer loans as quickly as they did earlier. Are banks facing the heat? “Customer leverage has also gone up in both the retail and corporate segments, and there is increasing vulnerability to further rises in interest rates given the inflationary situation and the pressure on margins,” says Ms Sonali Sinha, Associate Director, Transaction Advisory Services, Ernst & Young.

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'The single biggest cost item for an IPL club is its annual licence fee to the BCCI'

‘IPL franchisees may have better margins than Arsenal, Man U’

Fans maketh the sport, as many marketeers say. Even as people wait for the next edition of IPL, there are signs that this tournament would have to be accommodated as a permanent fixture in International Cricket Council (ICC) calendar. What makes it so compelling? Pure business logic, says Mr Dushyant Singh, Associate Director, Strategic and Commercial Intelligence, Transaction Services of KPMG India.

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