JOIN USThe Institute of International Finance (IIF), the trade group of global banks, has said that India was the highest recipient of portfolio flows in recent months among countries publishing high-frequency data.
In an email response to Deccan Herald, Emre Tiftik, financial economist at IIF, confirmed that “Indian bond and equity funds have attracted around $4 billion since the start of the year”. He cited EPFR Global, a company which provides fund flow and asset allocation data to financial institutions, to say that around $3.1 billion of this was by institutional investors.
In contrast, he said that during the period, Chinese bonds and equity funds recorded $7.1 billion in outflows, with $5.2 billion of it being withdrawn by institutional investors. While funds flowed out of markets like Brazil and China, India was a beneficiary of the inflows.
Russia too was a surprising recipient of inflows, albeit at a smaller level. “Russian funds saw around $273 million inflows and Brazilian funds recorded $1.3 billion outflows,” he said.
The Washington, DC-based IIF also said fund flows into emerging markets halved in February to $12 billion from $23 billion in January.
In response to another question, Tiftik said, “India accounts for around 1.17% of global fund investors portfolio (mutual fund (MF) and ETF investors). In the beginning of the year, it was around 1.14%.” He conceded that considering the size of India’s gross domestic product (GDP), “Indian funds are heavily un-represented in global fund investors portfolio.”
According to the Association of Mutual Funds in India, assets managed by the Indian MF industry were at Rs 11.7 lakh crore in January 2015. Individual investors account for 46 per cent of MF assets, and institutional investors account for the rest, a presentation by Amfi said.