Mumbai as an International Financial Centre (MIFC)

The report of the High Powered Expert Committee (HPEC) on Mumbai as an International Financial Centre (MIFC) has been released. The report itself has been published by Sage Publications. The website of the Ministry of Finance has:

• A press release
• A short summary
• A web page with the full report and a collection of materials on the subject.
• Video files from a CII conference on the subject. In particular, the talks by P. Chidambaram, Vijay Kelkar and Brooks Entwistle are well worth watching. Warning: They are .wmv files and don't work on all machines. And, for the wmv-challenged or bandwidth-constrained, MOF has a PDF file with a transcript of FM's talk.

Percy Mistry, who was the Chairman of the committee for most of its life, has written an article: The Mumbai-IFC report: of Discourse, Garlands and Brickbats!. A fascinating stream of commentary has started coming out from 4 April onwards:

• Editorials in Financial Express, Business Standard, Economic Times, Indian Express, Mint. An editorial in The Telegraph asks `Why not Calcutta?'. Economic Times.
• Gautam Chikermane in Indian Express.
• Shaji Vikraman in Economic Times.
• Andy Mukherjee on Bloomberg.
• High finance for the aam admi, T. K. Arun, in Economic Times.
• Rajrishi Singhal in Economic Times.
• A fine theme for a dream, by Mythili Bhusnurmath, in Economic Times.
• A. V. Rajwade in Business Standard.
• Richard Lambert compares the MIFC report against London's story, in Financial Times ($$).
• Deepak Lal in Business Standard.
• Nitin Desai in Business Standard.
• An editorial in Financial Express and another in Business Standard.
• The end of cynicism, by Jamal Mecklai in Business Standard.
• The Mystery Of Missing Mistry, by Ashok V. Desai in Business World.
• An interview with Percy by Sitanshu Swain and Umesh Kumar in Financial Express.
• Bombay Plan 2007, by Vijay Kelkar, in Indian Express. (This is based on the video file by him that's mentioned at the start of this blog entry).
• Mumbai as a global financial centre, by T. Thomas, in Business Standard.
• Mumbai's Moment, and an interview with Percy, by Mobis Philipose and M. Anand in Business World.
• Talk by M. Narasimham on MIFC at ASCI, Hyderabad.
• An interview with Percy in DNA.
• Maximum city? by Sanjeev Sanyal in Indian Express.
• Mumbai IFC: A visionary report, by S. S. Tarapore.
• Mumbai as IFC, by A. V. Rajwade.
• Should finance ministry start handling public debt?, by K. G. Narendranath and M. K. Venu.
• India's shackles, by Stewart Fleming in Financial World.
• Evaluating Mumbai's IFC aspiration by U. R. Bhat in Economic Times.
• The mystery report, by Shankar Acharya in Economic Times.
• Cracking open India's capital account, by Eswar Prasad, in Asian Wall Street Journal.
• Currency derivatives, an edit in Financial Express.
• Win-win in India by Stewart Fleming in Financial World.
• Article on MIFC by Sanjeev Sanyal of Deutsche Bank.
• Finance tail wagging the economy dog, by T T Ram Mohan, in Economic and Political Weekly.
• Ahmedabad instead of Bombay?
• I wrote an article on the implications of MIFC for the domestic securities industry.
• Booming Mumbai floods, lacking political will, by John Elliott.
• Finance and India's development, by Nirvikar Singh, in Financial Express.
• Article by Jaimini Bhagwati in Business Standard.
• Article by S. Venkitaramanan in Hindu Business Line.
• Article by Vinayak Chaterjee in Business Standard.
• A blog entry by Saravade.
• Several birds with one stone, in Business Standard, by Jamal Mecklai.
• Article by Rajeev Malik in Economic Times.
• Article by Jaideep Mishra in Economic Times.
• Icing on the cake by Subir Gokarn in Business Standard.
• Waterfront Suffers Neglect as Mumbai Rents Zoom by Andy Mukherjee on Bloomberg.
• Article on the political economy of the MIFC report by Ila Patnaik in Financial Express.
• RBI: Don't hurry convertibility, by Surabhi, Financial Express.
• Article by Nirvikar Singh in Financial Express.
• Implications of new international financial centres, in Business Standard, by me.

And here are some recent developments which link up to the picture of MIFC, though they are not directly linked to the book:

• A New York Times story on global banks taking interest in Bombay.
• An article in Economic Times by Bodhistava Ganguli about financial services exports that India could do on the strength of having no estate tax.
• Bombay's growth gets Shanghaied, by Salil Tripathi in Far Eastern Economic Review, April 2007 [pdf].
• Mumbai amongst world's top 10 financial hubs, in Indian Express, 18 June 2007. Also see the blog entry by Jayanth Varma on interpreting this.
• Should RBI or SEBI regulate the currency futures market? An edit in Business Standard.
• Korea makes the moves towards IFC.
• The race is on to be Asia's #1 for finance, by Sundeep Tucker, Financial Times.
• Come one, come all, by Edward Glaeser, New York Sun.
• Lessons from Motown, by Daniel Gross, Newsweek.
• Maharashtra vs. Gujarat as financial centres.

Lots of people are asking me: From what store do I get the book? I just got this information from Sage about Bombay and Delhi. In Delhi: Teksons at Noida, Greater Kailash, Part I, South Extension, Part I, Saket. Midlands at Aurobindo Market, South Extension, Part I. Bahrisons at Khan Market. New Book Depot at Connaught Place. Some other bookshops in Khan Market seem to have it too. In Bombay: Crossword (all locations), Strand Bookstore, Horizon at Vile Parle (W), Granth Book Shop at Juhu and Goregaon (W), Landmark in Andheri (W). In Washington, D.C.. On Amazon.

Slideshows about MIFC: by Percy Mistry, K. P. Krishnan, Josh Felman, me.

If you would like to link to this page, http://tinyurl.com/mistry is a handy shortform for the full URL - http://ajayshahblog.blogspot.com/2007/04/mumbai-as-international-financial.html