December 24, 2011

National Highway Authority of India (NHAI) is usually known for issuing Section 54EC bonds, but for the first time they are issuing tax free bonds as well.

Now, a lot of people confuse tax savings or no TDS with tax free, but these are truly tax free bonds, which means that the interest from these bonds is tax exempt – you don’t have to pay any tax on the interest regardless of your income tax bracket.

The bonds will list on the BSE and NSE, and if you sell them on the exchange and make capital gains on them, then that will be taxable. Listing of the bonds doesn’t however mean that the bonds will be issued in dematerialized form only and you will compulsorily need a demat account.

NHAI bonds will be issued in both physical and demat form, so people who don’t have demat accounts can also buy these bonds. There are two series of bonds – one with a ten year maturity, and the other with a 15 year maturity. The first series has an interest rate of 8.20% and the second series has an interest rate of 8.30%, both the series will pay interest annually.

Since some of the best bank interest rates are at 10% right now – you can see that for people in the 30% or 20% tax bracket – this issue has got great yield.

NHAI tax free bonds have been rated CRISIL AAA/Stable, CARE AAA, and Fitch AAA by CRISIL, CARE and Fitch respectively. These are very high ratings, and although NHAI has made losses in the last three years – it’s easy to see how these credit agencies assigned these bonds the highest rating.

This is a secured issue from a company that comes under the Government of India, and as such it’s hard to see how NHAI could default on its debt obligation.

I think this is a good issue especially for people in the 30% tax bracket, and won’t be surprised if it gets over subscribed in the first few days itself. This is especially so because interest rates can’t remain this high forever and this issue allows you to lock on to these high rates for 10 or 15 years, which is quite a good return for a safe debt instrument. And even NRIs can invest in these bonds, so to the extent they can manage the application process, this will be an attractive offer for them as well.

SBI CapitalÂ Markets, AK Capital Services, MCS Limited, ICICI Securities and Kotak Mahindra Capital are the lead managers to the issue so you should find the application forms in their offices. Other investment firms like Karvy should also have the application forms, and I think some of these companies will also enable it so that you can apply for the NHAI tax free bonds online, but I don’t have a definite list yet.

I’m sure as more information comes in – you will leave comments and I’ll update the post with where exactly you can find the application forms etc. at the time.

Meanwhile, many thanks to Rakesh Jain who let me know about this issue much in advance, and let’s hear any other questions or observations you have about the NHAI issue in the comments.

Application Form of NHAI Tax Free Bonds

Update: Deleted the part about allotment being on a first come first serve basis per Shiv’s comment below.

The Economist has an interesting article on crowd wisdom which talks about how people decide which direction to move to when they see someone coming from the opposite direction, and they say that in France people step to the right to avoid a collision, while in most parts of Asia – people step to the left to avoid a collision. This has nothing to do with which side you drive because people drive on the left in London but step on the right to avoid a collision when walking.

The answer has to do with behavior which is also the topic of the second link in another interesting article on the behavioral economics of gift giving. It turns out that cash is the best gift, but you may not want to give such an impersonal gift – so try something expensive and useless if picking a gift for a girl and a gadget if looking for a gift for a guy!

Facebook is expected to come up with an IPO next year, and this WSJ story has some interesting details about how they are preparing for the IPO and things they want to watch out for like bowing to the short term expectations of shareholders.

I was surprised to read this article that said one political party in Iceland is suggesting that they adopt the Canadian dollar. It doesn’t look like this will happen and while it sounds very odd at first, when you think about it some more – if you are going to adopt something like the Euro why not adopt something more stable instead, right?

News of downgrades have become very common these days, so it was refreshing to see Moody’s praise Poland for managing inflation and maintaining a flexible exchange rate which combined with other things leads Moody’s to believe that Poland will grow rather than contract in 2012.

Something a bit less dramatic – Ranjan writes about Metlife’s Met Smart Child.

Finally, in a bit of relief India’s food inflation dips to 4 year lows.

Enjoy your Christmas weekend!

Update: Corrected the error pointed out by Ashok in his comment.

Day: December 24, 2011

NHAI Tax Free Bonds

Wisdom of crowds, Facebook’s IPO and Iceland’s Currency