India is talking with JP Morgan and others to gain entry to benchmark indexes for emerging market debt in hopes of attracting billions of dollars in investment and may ease some restrictions on foreign inflows in order to do so, sources said.
To qualify for entry into the widely-followed JP Morgan Government Bond Index - Emerging Markets, India needs to ease rules on registration, documentation, due diligence rules for the entry of foreign institutional investors (FIIs) in the Indian debt market, besides allowing them to invest more in the government debt, two sources said.
To qualify for entry into the widely-followed JP Morgan Government Bond Index - Emerging Markets, India needs to ease rules on registration, documentation, due diligence rules for the entry of foreign institutional investors (FIIs) in the Indian debt market, besides allowing them to invest more in the government debt, two sources said.
With a wide current account gap and a weakened rupee, India wants to attract some of the billions of dollars managed passively by tracking global indexes. However, Indian restrictions limit foreign investment in onshore debt, which exclude it from indexes managed by JP Morgan and others.
India has been taking steps to ease investment rules but is also skittish about fully removing limits given worries about the volatility of global flows. Its credit rating also stands just one notch above junk status, although a downgrade would not disqualify it from an emerging market index.
Inclusion in popular government bond indexes could attract $20 billion-$40 billion in additional flows into India over a year, Standard Chartered Bank wrote in a report last month.
