Long-term positive on India, Budget good for mkts: Nomura

Excerpts from Bazaar on CNBC-TV18 Watch the full show » RELATED NEWS Q4 results to trigger mkt upmove: PN Vijay Experts see Nifty range getting narrower going forward Nifty to break below 5000 to end range-bound trend: Dalton ALSO READ See what other FIIs are saying about the markets See what other experts are saying about markets See what Udayan Mukherjee is saying about the markets Nifty BSE | NSE 10/02/12 Are Mutual Funds betting on Nifty?

The past six sessions have been lackluster for the Indian markets on the back of almost flat global cues. In fact, Alastair Newton, Managing Director and Senior Political Analyst at Nomura International, feels the Euro zone problems are not over yet. "There are significant concerns among fund managers over Spain." The US concerns, he said, were expected to build-up close to mid-term elections.

Being positive on the India story in the long term, Newton said Budget 2010 had been good for the markets. "It is likely that the Finance Minister will pursue market-friendly reforms," he said, adding that he was watching for incremental progress on reforms.

Here is a verbatim transcript of the exclusive interview with Alastair Newton on CNBC-TV18. Also watch the accompanying video.

Q: Last one week we haven't heard too much from Greece, are those problems over and behind us you think fully?

A: They are not entirely over, certainly considerable progress has been made in the last few weeks, but Greece has around 25 billion euros of debt to rollover between now and the end of May. We need to see how bond markets are going to react to that and keep in mind that the euro zone has not yet put in place any standby financial guarantees.

Certainly the political support is there, but the financial support isn't yet in and the markets may wish to see some guarantees about Greek debt in order to keep rates at the sort of levels we saw with last week's bond syndication rather than over 7% which we saw in bond syndication in February. The aim clearly is to keep Greek interest rates below 6% if possible.