Opinion: Global Bond Inclusion - A Win For India
NDTV
Each September, the bond market awaits the announcement of India's inclusion in global bond indices. Much ink (mostly digital these days) gets spilled on the likely impact of inclusion. Like the characters in Samuel Beckett's (Irish novelist and dramatist) play, each year we have heard the news that inclusion is not coming this year. Well, Godot has arrived.
JP Morgan has announced that Indian G-Secs will form part of its global emerging market bond indices (GBI-EM Global index suite). Historically, the participation of foreign investors in the Indian markets has been tepid and virtually non-existent. The suggested inclusion could drive US$25 - 30 billion (Rs 2.5 lakh crore) over the next 18 months. Markets have been a buzz on possible inclusions, the confirmation saw markets react positively across the yield curve with long bonds seeing heightened trading activity. The benchmark 10-year G-Sec stood at 7.10% at the time of writing this note.
The initial reaction was the obvious one: the market rallied (yields dropped) on open by about 8 bps. In the hours since, most of that opening gain has been given away. The reason being that this was largely anticipated. While this index inclusion news is good, we need to temper our expectations and look beyond the initial reaction to see the impact over a period of time.
