Sunday, September 25, 2011

Abudhabi - Dubai episode and the Credit Crisis

It was the biggest news for the promoters of Dubai World when Prince Khalifa finally agreed to loan $12bn to rescue them from bankruptcy 


The image below is what Abu-Dhabi looks like. It has very high number of industries and many more are coming in their way. Abu Dhabi also holds around 9% of the world’s proven oil reserves and almost 5% of the world’s natural gas. Abu Dhabi has built it's sustainence on manufacturing industry and hydrocarbon trading.




This image below shows the famed Palm beach, World Beach amongst other attractions.
It also has the world's tallest building and the world's only 7 star hotel - Burj Khalifa. 


Initially the hotel was named Burj Dubai, but then the owners Dubai World didn't knew the economic crisis of US and the real estate crisis of Dubai will come in. The king of Dubai then to sell of his jewel holdings to Abu-Dhabi king so as to not default on the payments. Amongst jewels sold completely or partially were the Dubai Metro, Burj Dubai

Though united in names but divided by work, The United Arab Emirates showcases the coming together of kings for not so related purpose. They fight amongst each other for being the richest, famous and powerful. They do not work for the betterment of the country on the whole, but for their own emirate. Each emirate has its owned petroleum company with strict demarcation of boundaries of operations, each emirate works as an independent country within country. This presents a huge conflict of interests for the smooth working. The Dubai government was borrowing recklessly for its expansion of business in the hay days. 



So learning from this international experience one aspect we can appreciate of India is that although it has 28 states (another in the making) and 5 union territories, India has been able to maintain the unity amongst them. The governance structure is maintained to bailout any state in distress and no state is allowed to go on reckless spending. So a centralised control is always beneficial. 

A second analogy which can be drawn upon is with the Credit Crisis of 2008. The crisis was triggered because of lack of regulations and controls in the financial OTC (Over The Counter) trading system. The Federal Reserve was not willing to impose regulations and believed in free market economy, wherein the markets will take care of any wrong doings. The OTC market which traded the derivative instruments (which do seem to be quite complex even for the government institutions meant to keep a check on these items) ran into just a trillion dollar (1000 billion, or a thousand thousand million) more than the world GDP at that time. 

So what do we need to do about this? Should the Indian financial markets adopt greater regulations v/s financial liberalization? Or can there be both?

No comments:

Post a Comment