Parul
As investment opportunities drag for China, India not only seems to be a clear beneficiary in terms of an attractive investment destination but also appears to be emerging as the best option with a positive growth and inflation outlook in the current fiscal, according to a research report prepared by the State Bank of India (SBI).
Commenting on China’s sliding construction sector, the SBI report said that as India’s eastern neighbour struggles with a meltdown in the sector, housing sales in India during the first half of 2022 i.e. between January and June, reached the highest level since the first half of 2013.
The reason behind the boom in housing sales in India was mainly due to low interest rates and affordable pricing of units as well as renewed demand for homes, fuelled by the Coronavirus pandemic, the report noted.
Growing by 60 per cent year-on-year, the sale of 158,705 units during first half of 2022 was 19 per cent higher than the corresponding period of last year in seven major cities, the SBI report noted.
The research report further underlined the enthusiasm towards India by citing the recent example of “Apple’s recent move to shift part production of the iPhone 14 model for world-wide shipping from India, with a negligible time lag lag of a few weeks, post it’s slated launch on September 7, bears testimony to such optimism”.
“The move by Apple, the most recognisable face of tech-infused innovation in the last two centuries, that captures aspirations of an upwardly mobile population, should open the floodgates for other major conglomerates to follow suit,” the report said.
It also gave example of India’s equity and currency markets, which the report said, recovered after initially having reacted adversely to US Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell’s comments reaffirming its (bank’s) commitment to frontload rate hikes by central banks, to recoup some of the losses in subsequent trades.
The portfolio inflows turned positive even though they were marginal at $30 million on August 29, the SBI report said.
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The overall portfolio inflows since July 29 is now $7.6 billion, as against an outflow of $14.7 billion in 2022-23 prior to July 29, it added.
“Clearly, India seems to be enjoying the TINA (there is no alternative) factor, as globally all countries are facing the churn and India seems to be the best-placed jurisdiction in terms of growth and inflation outlook in FY23,” the report observed.
