Friday, April 10, 2009

Why fundamentals of Indian economy is in question?

One financial crisis in US and the equity market in the whole world shaken up with significant decline. Fundamental equations of various industries are questioned and depression took over. How safe is Indian market? All analysis indicates no fundamental error but global depression and rumors have sufficient potential to prove these analysis wrong. I should be positive but negatives can not be ignored in sudden panic environment all across.
Can you estimate how much a panic environment may create a damage? Recent rumors on ICICI bank followed by crash of its stock price is just one of the several such examples. Deposit ratios and leverage of Indian banks are much healthier than that of several top performing banks of US and Europe and still the prices are falling. Again fundamentally nothing is that bad as it is reflected in falling stock prices. Another potential damage is redemption pressure on mutual funds creating a negative cycle of further depression by killing the option of Indian MFs to use their liquidity to invest in declining market.
Let us park rumors and depression aside for a moment and try to analyze some of the fundamental issues of Indian equity market which may affect future of market after stabilizing from current turmoil.
1. First and foremost is the question of decoupling of Indian economy from US. Is it really possible? In one of the interview with Uday Kotak, director of Kotak Mahindra bank recommends that India should stop depending on global flows and start relying more on its domestic savings and domestic ability. The only question to address is the future of globalised Indian industry like IT which triggered Indian GDP growth to more than 8% in past few years and attracted most of global inflows.
2. Second is actual estimate of GDP growth. If the current situation stays for some more time, it will affect the demand. Maintaining more than 7.5% growth will be a challenge. If it drops below 6.5% which is very unlikely as the fundamentals are still okay, the global inflows will be affected.
3. Third is competition with other emerging economies especially China for preferred investment destination. Both economies are having various strengths. The differences to asses are types of governance, service vs. manufacturing capabilities and fiscal deficit vs. fiscal surplus.
4. Fourth is monetary policy. On one hand; RBI announcing further rate cut by 150 basis point, on the other inflation is still above 11%. Further cut in CRR and SLR is expected to manage the current liquidity crisis with some boost to GDP. Monetary policy will be interesting to watch if the objective is to decouple Indian economies from developed countries as I discussed in point no one above. The challenge for the policy makers is how to address issues of both Inflation and growth together.
5. And finally Upcoming union elections and the result.

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