Aberdeen | Frankfurt, 26.05.2015.
Sehr geehrte Damen und Herren, ein Jahr Modi in Indien – was ist passiert und was liegt noch vor uns? Adrian Lim, Senior Investment Manager bei Aberdeen Asset Management, kommentiert den Jahrestag der erwartungsvollen Amtseinführung von Premierminister Modi:
“Letztes Jahr um diese Zeit wurde Modi mit überschwenglicher lokaler Unterstützung vereidigt. Die Erwartungen an den neuen Premierminister Indiens, alles Nötige zu tun, um die Indische Wirtschaft wieder auf gesunde Füße zu stellen, waren enorm hoch, und die Aktienkurse sind gestiegen.”
“Nun, zwölf Monate später, ist etwas vom Glanz der Modi-Story abgeplatzt. Der S&P BSE Sensex Index, in dem die 30 größten Unternehmen Indiens zusammengefasst sind, hat im letzten Monat etwa 4 Prozent nachgegeben, nachdem er mehr als 16 Prozent seit der Zeremonie am 26. Mai letzten Jahres zugelegt hatte. Es gibt Anzeichen dafür, dass einige ausländische Investoren, bisland die größten Fans des Premierministers, Geld aus dem indischen Markt herausziehen”, so Aberdeen Fondsmanager Adrian Lim.
Lesen Sie weiter unten den kompletten Kommentar auf Englisch. Für Rückfragen und Erläuterungen oder ein Gespräch mit Adrian Lim stehen wir Ihnen jederzeit gern zur Verfügung.
Mit freundlichen Grüßen
Dirk Greiling
aberdeen@newmark.de
+49 69 944180 16
Modi: one year on
May 2015
This time last year Narendra Modi was being sworn into office amid a groundswell of popular support. Expectations were flying high for India’s new prime minister to fulfil election promises to do whatever necessary to get the economy back on its feet. Share prices surged. Twelve months later and some of the gloss has rubbed off the Modi story. The S&P BSE Sensex Index, which tracks 30 of India’s largest companies, has retreated around 4% over the past month, after gaining more than 16% since the May 26 ceremony last year. There are signs some foreign investors, hitherto among the premier’s biggest fans, are pulling money out of this market. A key reason for this is the Minimum Alternate Tax. Foreign fund managers, who were exempt from this levy, were told last month they may receive new tax bills totalling some US$6 billion on income stretching back to 2009. All of a sudden, Modi’s India didn’t seem quite so pro-business after all.
But that’s not the only reason. Speculation had driven share prices to levels that are hard to sustain, especially without improvements in corporate earnings. Modi may be committed to sweeping away entrenched obstacles to economic growth, but the stock markets reflect the sort of major reforms – a nationwide sales tax; land acquisition legislation as a precondition for infrastructure development – the prime minister has yet to deliver. To be fair, it was never going to be easy. India – a country of some 1.2 billion people, 22 official languages and a lively democracy – doesn’t easily lend itself to centralised control. Much has been written about Modi’s powerful mandate following his Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) landslide victory last year, but since then cracks have appeared. The BJP were trounced in the Delhi state elections back in February, while Modi’s party still doesn’t control the upper house of the national legislature which threatens to block his reform bills.
The tax bill faced by foreign investors is an unwelcome step backwards. While the Minimum Alternate Tax, or Mat, has been around since the 1990s, it was created to raise fiscal revenue from domestic businesses only. We welcome moves to expand India’s tax base, but we can’t condone the arbitrary and retroactive nature of these demands. Investors need rules that are predictable and fair. Having said all this there are plenty of other things to feel good about. Finance minister Arun Jaitley and Reserve Bank of India governor Raghuram Rajan have championed sensible policies so the economy is in much better shape than it was even a couple of years ago
Costly fuel subsidies have been scaled back; inflation is finally under control; chronically elevated interest rates are falling; and the rupee has shown resilience against a resurgent dollar. More recently, the economy grew at a faster pace than neighbouring China’s. And long before everyone got excited about how Modi was going to make everything better, we were already investing in selected Indian companies because they are among the best that Asia has to offer. These companies work hard in the interests of their shareholders, something that not many firms in the region can claim to do, and over the years they have made a lot of money for our funds. So one year on and Narendra Modi may not have achieved the perfect report card. The progress of reform may not have been as fast as some people may have hoped for, while the sceptic would argue that cheap oil has played a disproportionate role in India’s rosy economic outlook.
But the path of reform in India was never going to be straight and smooth and, to be fair, it’s still early days. Anyone who has ever been stuck in a Mumbai traffic jam will know that it can take a while to arrive at your destination.
Adrian Lim, Senior Investment Manager
Aberdeen Asset Management
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