fencer siecaso 1278 Tivok tet nas coo omen pronase TaxSaver F- snss GETER)_MARREE WAH v Tre Ecoxomic Times Markets Enslen Edson | E-Daper Special omer on ETP Home Budget2021 ETprime Markets News Industy RISE Poltics Wealth MF Tech Opinion NRI Panache ETNOW More + Stocks + IBOVFPOS Matkete Data. Market Moguls Caper Technicals» Commence Forax> Bonds Steck ame + Webinars Mare «| Don't blame bureaucrats for stalling privatisation: Subhash Chandra Garg ‘synopsis am convinced that the privatisation policy is adhere servants would deliver roby the poltcians, the evi INTHE SPOTLIGHT By Tamanna Inamdar ‘Here's how you can maintain your clothes effortlessly ‘The basic mindset of the government at the policy level is still public sector oriented. Most of the ministers believe that the public sector entity should remain under their control, says Subhash RELATED (Chandra Garg, Former Finance Secretary. cuvesnoneys Q~ scones0 ‘Well bring all stakeholders Nirmala stharoran Youhavebeen in government andyouknowthe | Wat ig the full orm of GST? cemvesmentpusn wry Pushtowards privatisation. You know about India needstoprovdes” the political push back as well. What is the Coods and Services ax robust legal shel tots bureaucrats actual challenge to push through the process perlament passesbilto _- @P&rt from the declarations of intent? Goods and Securities Transaction provide autonomy to major First thing we should remember is that the policy aoe twvatenone’ is decided by politicians, not by the bureaucrats or Goods and Securities Tax the civil servants. The decision to virtually make Goods and Services Transaction oh India or Indian industry, infrastructure and Read Stock natural resources a reserve of the public sector Insights by ETfor was taken by the first Congress governments in the country. Before independence, Indian industry | Growth at Reasonable Price Hindustan Petroleum was largely private. There was nota single industry | joca acs 190095 230: sepperation tia. except railways and the post office in the public taoustabe er sector. AantaPrarms 808A 0754 Manappuraméin 19590-0255 The politicians took that decision that socialism is good for the country and therefore muzzled the private sector, killed the private sector and brought everything under the public sector. The game was a bad one. This was leading India toa very ar unproductive kind of svstem and the results were there. In the first 40 vears. Read before you invest. Insights on Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Ltd.. Explore Nowsector and it was functioning very inefficiently. This realisation came in 1991 Again, it was a political decision to change and allow the private sector to come and work along with the public sector whether itis in the airlines, telecom or IT. Now I think we are at a third inflection point where the prime minister is saying and absolutely rightly that the public sector does not work efficiently and therefore wherever the public sector is working inefficiently ~- in airlines, telecom ete-- we should pass it on to the private sector. Production of goods and services is the private sector's job. The civil servants’ job is to execute that policy. But they do not run the public sector. About 95% of the public sector is run by the professionals, not the IAS officers. can cite from my own example that when we decided that the airports would be privatised, in four months, we could ready six airports for privatisation. 1 am convinced that if this policy is decided and is adhered to by the politicians, the civil servants would deliver the policy of privatisation. Let everyone do his, or her job. Don't blame the civil servants for coming in the way. The policy decision in 1991 was to allow the private sector in all sectors of the economy. The civil servants implemented that policy very well. Today, you have the private sector in every sector of the economy except what is reserved like atomic energy and some part of the railways which are reserved by political decision making. Now that the decision to privatise has been taken, I ‘would suggest you look at the policy which has been announced, Inthe last six years of the Modi government, there has been aclear intent to privatise/disinvest. We have already had attempts to sell for example Air India, BPCL|NSE -0.51 %| a lot of companies are on the block. Whereis itgetting stuck? Air India is literally a very poor asset. It is a liability. For the last 2-3 years, attempts are being made to sell it. The other privatisation decision for BPCL, etc, came up only last year. For the first five years there was not a single privatisation. HPCL [NSE -1.56 %]was sold to another public sector company. REC was sold to another public sector company the PFC. Ifyou go through the transactions and the shareholders agreement, in both the cases even that public sector was not given the management control. HPCL took about one- and-a-half years to agree that ONGC is its promoter. PFC| does not have management control over REC even today. $0 I do not think it is correct to say that there have been attempts to privatise in the last five years. This privatisation decision is only about one-and-a-half-year-old. ‘Some people argue that sectors like health and education should not be fully privatised. because then you may end up with low quality expensive options. The argument is not as simple as it seems, isit? We should have a complete clarity on what the role of the government is. The ‘Bankprivatisation debate: Here'show the doyens ‘rade unlons political parties oppose RINL ‘Gorerament wants to privatise frm sector: Kamal Neth ‘Well bringall stakeholders on Doad on rvatisaton: Niemala Stharaman ‘Banks unions call for:wo-doy sik against proposed privatisation of 3s DISCOVER MUTUAL FUNDS, Trending in Markets Read before you invest. Insights on Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Ltd.. Explore Nowprivate goods and services is not the role of the government. Most of the public sector is in the private goods and services production and distribution. You can get your people lifted out of Libya or elsewhere or by hiring out the capacity in the private sector. Much of the country has been kept going by the ‘working from home, services delivered by the private sector. There is nothing inherently good or necessary for the public sector to remain in delivering services. Some of the essential delivery in financial services can be delivered through the private sector banks as well. ‘Coming to health and education - these are classical merit goods and public goods which the government must be delivering. These are not private goods. ‘There is no need for the MTNL [NSE -0.77 %]and BSNLor Air India to exist in the public sector. Allow those to be sold off for whatever it's worth. I will again give you the same example of privatisation of six airports. There was no criticism about valuations, etc. The six transactions were done successfully. But after that, nothing has happened vis-a-vis privatisation of the next six airports, There is something problematic about the execution capacity. ‘The basic mindset of the government at the policy level is still public sector oriented, Most of the ministers believe that the public sector entity should remain under their control. It is not civil servants who are coming in the way, So if there is a clarity of decision at the highest level, then you will see privatisation taking place in the country. (Wihat’s moving Sensex and Nifty Track latest market news, stock tips and ‘expert advice on ETMarkets A\s0, ETMarkets.com is now on Telegram. For fastest news alerts on financial markets, investment strategies and stocks alerts, subscribe to our Telegram feeds) Download Th News App to get Daily Market Updates & Live Business News ADD COMMENT v NEXT STORY ADVERTORIAL 5 reasons why bitcoin cryptocurrency prices are on the rise Read before you invest. Insights on Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Ltd.. Explore Now‘synop: Cryptocurrencies, especially Bitcoin, Is now being considered as a safe-haven asset against market volatility and infation. The current saciatal and ecanomi brings about a situation for people to hold ess cash and stay heaged against market swings ‘The eryptocurrency market has continued to ‘witness a boom despite the global pandemic wreaking havoc on all significant economies on the planet. Many crypto startups have emerged in the space during this pandemic to cater to the ever- increasing demand for Bitcoin and alike cryptocurrencies. For instance, CoinSwitch Kuber recently announced the raising of $15 million (Rs 109 crore) Series A funding from leading global fintech investors such as Ribbit Capital, Paradigm, Sequoia Capital India and prominent angel investor Kunal Shah from CRED. Cryptocurrency market capitalisation fueled by Bitcoin's growth recently crossed the $1 trillion mark Out of which, Bitcoin, has been on a bull run for quite some time and is responsible for roughly 69% of the total market value, Just six months ago, the price of one Bitcoin was -%6,00,000 and today Bitcoin is trading for -825,00,000 which is approximately a 400% rise in the price. Ether, the second-largest cryptocurrency in terms of market capitalisation, crossed a new high of over &1,00,000 and rose over 1,000% in value in one year. Similarly, many cryptocurrency prices have been on the rise, and investors are wondering why. Here are five reasons why cryptocurrency prices are rising: INTHE SPOTLIGHT Here’showyoucanmaintain | your clothes effortlessly Growth at Reasonable Price tpca Labs 90095 240 Laurus Labe 7890 22% ‘Janta Pharma 1903.05.07 Manappuram Fla W605 014% ar RELATED MOSTREAD | MOSTSHARED Budget session agenda; Cryptocurency, snfrastrstre investment Ccyptocurency exchange Coinbase les with regulator tog pudiie Ccptocurency maybe used asa hedge, nt unlike soldarnab Das ‘Bitcoin itsreord as Mastercard BNY Mellon embrace eryptocurtency ‘Contours of nda’ Cryptocurency Bill may tigger egal tussle DISCOVER MUTUAL FUNDS. sms pemene Trending in Markets Read before you invest. Insights on Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Ltd.. Explore NowInstitutional Adoption Cryptocurrencies, especially Bitcoin, is now being considered as a safe-haven asset against market volatility and inflation. The current societal and economic climate also brings about a situation for people to hold less cash and stay hedged against market swings. Recently, there has been a trend where public companies are converting their cash treasuries into cryptocurrency. Square, an American payments company, bought $50 million worth of Bitcoins. Following this, Microstrategy- a public listed company in the US, converted $425 million worth of cash reserves into Bitcoin, considering it to be a better store of value, Many companies have since followed this trend, The confidence of corporate giants on cryptocurrencies has added more merit to it as a currency and value store. Paypal & Cryptocurrencies In October 2020, the global digital payments company Paypal announced that it would be launching cryptocurrency buying and selling features on its, platform. The launch included four majorly traded currencies, namely Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, Ethereum, and Litecoin. Paypal has also announced plans of allowing, transactions to be made using cryptocurrencies. Paumal ¥e lnaum ta have 260 millinn neare wha will nou he conahla af Read before you invest. Insights on Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Ltd.. Explore Nowthe option of receiving payments in crypto. Paypal was one of the critics of cryptocurrency as a sustainable currency. Now itis one of the biggest names jumping on the bandwagon. Along with others and PayPal's support, there has been more demand for the asset class, thus contributing to its price rise, Apart from Paypal, the company also owns another popular payment platform ‘Venmo which will expose another 40 million users to crypto payment. While these platforms are new to crypto, some other platforms are already making crypto payments wider. As several private investors seek to adopt cryptocurrency as a means of exchange, many governments are also trying to regulate the market. Many countries like Japan, USA, Germany etc. have taken a positive stance towards cryptocurrencies. Bitcoin Halving Driven Scarcity It is not news that most cryptocurrencies in the market have a limited supply. Bitcoin is also one of them. This year the third Bitcoin Halving took place. Bitcoin halving is an important event in the Bitcoin network that happens every four years, ‘The Bitcoin network works because it introduces new bitcoins in the market bya process called Bitcoin mining. Bitcoin miners do this mining by verifying Bitcoin blocks which are simply groups of Bitcoin transactions. Every 10 minutes, a miner who can verify one block of transactions and add it to the Bitcoin network gets awarded a certain amount of bitcoins as a reward. Currently, this reward stands at 6.25 BTC per valid block mined. But this, reward per block reduces by half roughly every four years, or after every 210000 blocks are mined. This phenomenon of Bitcoin block reward getting reduced by 50% every four years is termed as Bitcoin halving, Italso doubles the stock to flow ratio (total currency available: total currency in circulation) making is highly scarce. Halvingis one of the most critical factors that contribute to the price of Bitcoin, Since there are only 21 million Bitcoins in total, there is less circulation of the market currency as the reward decreases. And as more people become aware of the asset's scarcity, more demand rises, resulting in a higher price. Read before you invest. Insights on Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Ltd.. Explore Nowprice variation may affect other currencies. Easy Accessibility To Public Cryptocurrency is a digital currency that can be used as both - a store of value and a mode of exchange. While it has just started to gain attention as a legit, payment method, it has established itself as a new asset class over the past decade, Even if the public is unwilling to use it for transactions, many want to convert their cash into crypto because they believe that its deflationary nature makes ita better store of value and a hedge against inflation. Especially in India, after the RBI ban against cryptocurrency was lifted, its investors had a significant surge. Many platforms have launched and received funding in this space to make crypto investing accessible, One such platform is CoinSwitch Kuber- acquiring over two million users in just six months after it launched. As cryptocurrency is becoming more accessible to the public, more retail investors want a share of the asset class and are willing to pay more, Bottom Line Ifthe rising prices in the crypto market have got you thinking that it is too late to invest in cryptocurrencies, understand that this is just the beginning, With more countries seeking to regulate the market, cryptocurrencies will become mainstream. Disclaimer: This above is non-editorial content and TIL hereby disclaims any and all warranties, express or implied, relating to the same. TIL does not ‘guarantee, vouch for or necessarily endorse any of the above content nor is responsible for them in any manner whatsoever. The article does not constitute investment advice, Please take all steps necessary to ascertain that any information and content provided is correct, updated and verified. (What's moving Sensex and Nifty Track latest market news, stock tips and expert advice on ETMarkets. Also, ETMarkets.com is now on Telegram. For fastest news alerts on financial markets, investment strategies and stocks alerts, subscribe to our Telegram feeds) Download The Economic Times News App to get Daily Market Updates & Live Business News Read before you invest. Insights on Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Ltd.. Explore NowADD COMMENT BROWSE OOOOOOOOO Search News, Stock Quotes &NAV QOOOQOOODOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO® Trending Now Rahul Cand Other Useful Links ce Recreseal Popular Categories Export Vi commodities In Case You Missed It More From Our Network Brand Cap Mumbai Miror Inciatimes FT cocreen Adage india Services = Read before you invest. Insights on Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Ltd.. Explore Now