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ICRIER N E W S Vol. XVIII, July - December 2007 Contents ØGoverning Body ØLetter from the Director ØSeminars ØLectures ØRecent Publications ØICRIER Welcomes ØICRIER in the News ØVisitors/Participants ØAbout ICRIER Governing Body Isher Judge Ahluwalia Uday S. Kotak R. A. Mashelkar Kirit S. Parikh Swati A. Piramal Chanda Kochhar Janaki Kathpalia Vijay Laxman Kelkar Rakesh Mohan N. Ravi Aman Mehta Shankar N. Acharya N. K. Singh Nitin Desai Arvind Panagariya O. P. Bhatt Malvinder Mohan Singh Nandan M Nilekani Rajiv Kumar Letter from the Director Dear Readers: The second half of 2007 was a busy period for ICRIER with several high level academic conferences and seminars and the completion of some major research studies. During this period (July to December), 23 conferences, research seminars and workshops were organized in collaboration among others with the Ministry of External Affairs; OECD; The Sasakawa Peace Foundation; Konrad Adenauer Stiftung; UniCredit Bank of Italy; InWent Corporation, Germany; World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. The conference on `India’s Look East Policy – Challenges for Sub-Regional Cooperation’ was organized in Guwahati from 7th to 9th October, 2007, with the support of the Public Diplomacy division of the Ministry of External Affairs and in collaboration with the OKD Institute of Social Change and Development, Guwahati. The conference was inaugurated by Minister of External Affairs, Mr. Pranab Mukherjee and included a keynote address by the Deputy Chairman of Planning Commission, Dr. Montek Singh Ahluwalia. The valedictory session was addressed by Mr. Mani Shankar Aiyar, Minister for Panchayati Raj and Development of North East Region. This is part of ICRIER’s focus on regional cooperation in South Asia and it is hoped that a subsequent phase of research and conference activities will include representatives from the leading think tanks and research institutes from neighbouring countries like Bangladesh, Bhutan, Nepal and Myanmar. A steering committee headed by Dr. L.C. Jain and comprising Mr. Jayanta Madhab, Mr. M.P. Bez Baruah, is guiding ICRIER’s research efforts for the North East Region for which a proposal has been submitted to the Planning Commission. As part of our Financial Sector Research Program, a high-level conference was organized in collaboration with the InWent Corporation, Ministry of Economic Cooperation, Government of Germany on `Globalization and Financial Sector Development in South and Central Asia’. The conference was held on 22nd and 23rd November, 2007. Key speakers included Dr. Rakesh Mohan, Deputy Governor of Reserve Bank of India, Prof. Martin Bohl, Professor, University of Munster, Germany, Professor Pierre Siklos, Wilfred Laurier University, Canada, Mr. K.P. Krishnan, Secretary, Department of Economic Affairs, Ministry of Finance, Professor Dietrich Schonwitz, Deutsche Bundesbank. The highlight of the conference was active participation of specially invited senior Central Bank representatives from South Asian countries such as Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Canada, Maldives and Nepal. It is proposed to organize a similar annual conference on the financial sector each year with an emphasis of capacity building in South Asian central banks, and academicians working in this field. One of the major highlights of this period was the international conference on `India and China’s Role in International Trade and Finance’ that was held on 6th and 7th December, 2007. Preparations for this conference were led by Prof. Barry Eichengreen, University of California, Berkley and Dr. Poonam Gupta, ICRIER, and included an international call for papers that was sent out in April 2007. Of more than 150 submissions received from all over the world, 12 papers were specially commissioned for the conference. Paper authors included some internationally renowned Economists like Prof. Alan Heston, University of Pennsylvania, Mr. Barry Bosworth, The Brookings Institution, Mr. Eswar Prasad, Cornell University, Mr. Bartz Van Ark, University of Groninger, Mr. Sertey Palsta, MIT, Mr. Rana Hasan, ADB and Mr. Jahangir Aziz, International Monetary Fund etc. The support received from Konrad Adenauer Stiftung and the IMF for this conference is gratefully acknowledged. 3 As reported earlier, the Asian Development Bank (ADB) has selected ICRIER as the Indian counterpart for a joint study on Development Experiences of India and China along with Institute of Public Policy Studies, Beijing University. ICRIER’s research team, led by Dr. Isher Ahluwalia visited Beijing for a two- day mid-term workshop where the preliminary findings of the ongoing studies were presented. ICRIER hosted the team of Chinese researchers working on this project in September, 2007 and then again in November, 2007 to facilitate their field work and discuss their preliminary findings. It is expected that the output from this research project will attract major attention in other developing countries. Since July 2007, ICRIER Rrsearchers completed nine (9) Research Studies and published 5 Working Papers. Those include: (1) OECD Agricultural Trade Reforms on India’s Prices and Producers Welfare, (2) Capital Adequacy Regime in India: An Overview, (3) Can Horticulture be a Success Story for India?, (4) Trade Possibilities and Non-Tariff Barriers to Indo-Pak Trade, (5) Iron Ore Export and related Issues, (6) Determinants of Competitiveness and Global Integration of the Indian Auto Industry, (7) Global Competitiveness of Plastics and Polymer Industry, (8) Emerging Asian Regionalism – Ten Years after the Asian Financial crisis, and (9) Impact of Preventive Health Care on Indian Industry and Economy. We secured eight (8) new Research Projects during the past six months for a total research grant commitment of Rs.103.8 lakh. The new research projects are: (1) Global Trading & Financial Systems Multilateralism of the WTO: Yale University, (2) South-South FDI, Third World Multinationals and Development: South Africa, (3) Convergence towards Regional Integration between the EU and India: Trade Implications for India and the UK: Aberystwyth University, (4) Development Strategy for Hill Region of Uttarakhand: CII, (5) Basic Structure of the system of Eduation & HRD in India, KEIO University, Japan, (6) Emerging Asian Regionalism – Ten years after the Asian Crisis: ADB. As part of our ongoing visitors programme, ICRIER hosted Prof. Barry Eichengreen, University of California, Berkeley, Mr. Barry Bosworth and Ms. Susan Collins of Georgetown University and Dr. Jean Joseph Boillot, Senior Fellow, CEEPI, Paris, France, Dr. K.S. Sarma, President of Ecostat Research Corp, who is helping ICRIER in building a model of leading indicators for export performance and Prof. T.N. Srinivasan of Yale University. ICRIER faculty and researchers have benefited really from the interactions with these eminent scholars and their presentations / seminars during their stay at ICRIER. The period also saw ICRIER contributing in a major way to pushing forward the activities of the South Asia Network of Economic Institutes (SANEI). We helped the PIDE Secretariat in organizing the SANEI Annual Seminar in Kathmandu in August 2007 and hosted the meeting of the Steering Committee in December 2007. ICRIER’s focus on regional cooperation in South Asia has been further strengthened in the publication of these papers and participation of ICRIER researchers in few international conferences/ seminars on this subject. I am happy to report that we have now completed our major structural renovation of the working space in ICRIER. Apart from providing additional work stations for our rapidly expanding research staff, the renovation has also upgraded and improved the working environment at ICRIER. However, it is clear to all of us that given the increasing demand for ICRIER’s services, both by domestic and international sponsors, we will be soon looking for additional office space. I take this opportunity to wish you a most joyous and fulfilling 2008 to all ICRIER’s friends and supporters. With best wishes Rajiv Kumar 4 Seminars 10 July Martin T. Bohl: Do Central Banks React to the Stock Market? Prof. Martin Bohl, Westfälische Wilhelms-University Münster, Germany, discussed whether central banks react systematically to stock price movements, based on his empirical study for the German Central Bank. In contrast to the results for the US, the findings for the Deutsche Bundesbank, prior to the European Central Bank taking responsibility for monetary policy in 1999, showed generally a weak relationship between German stock returns and short-term interest rates. 7 August Venkataraman Bharatwaj: SME Financing: Challenges and Opportunities Mr. Venkataraman Bharatwaj presented a practitioner’s account of SME financing in India. Some of the important challenges of SME financing are higher risk of the SMEs and the lack of reliable information and data on their business. He said some of the strategies that banks can adopt to meet these challenges are accepting collaterals outside the business and more importantly, understanding the business model of the SME. 9 August The National Interest Project The National Interest Project aims to examine the external aspects of India’s national interest, and relate it to its foreign policy for the next decade and beyond. Amb. Santosh Kumar, Project Director, said that a notional time-span till 2035 has been chosen so that the long-term objectives could be framed, and policies could be suggested for every ten-year period within those broad objectives.

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