NEW YORK: India is pushing for further inclusion in JPMorgan Chase’s emerging-market indexes in a move that Aberdeen Asset Management says could attract $19 billion in investment.
Finance minister Palaniappan Chidambaram said after a speech in Washington on Thursday that the Reserve Bank of India is in talks with JPMorgan about getting the country’s debt into additional benchmarks. The government will first need to dismantle registration and quota systems in which onshore bonds purchased by foreign investors are regulated, Aberdeen said.
“It would be huge,” Kevin Daly, who helps oversee about $10 billion in emerging-market debt at Aberdeen, said by telephone from London. “You would definitely get significant inflows into the local market. It would help address concerns about financing the current account.”
JPMorgan’s GBI-EM Global Diversified index has about $190 billion of assets benchmarked to it and India would probably account for 10%, the maximum allowable, according to Aberdeen. The gauge currently excludes India and China because of capital controls that limit access to a majority of foreign investors. India likely wouldn’t gain inclusion in the index until next year at the earliest, Daly said. India’s economy expanded 5% in the fiscal year ended March, the smallest gain in a decade. Local currency Indian bonds have lost an average 8.1% this year in dollar terms as the rupee slumped 10.4%, according to data compiled by Bloomberg and JPMorgan.
