Domestic MFs have got $18 bn of inflows in one year: Sikka

Bullish over the growth prospects of Indian markets, top fund house Reliance Mutual Fund's CEO Sundeep Sikka on Sunday said domestic mutual funds in India have seen inflows worth USD 18 billion in the last one year. "This shows a renewed sense of optimism about Indian markets, where foreign investors also continue to repose faith," Sikka told a gathering of institutional investors and fund managers here.Sikka, who is also Chairman of mutual fund industry body AMFI, said there have been a lot of ambitious projects that have been launched, and Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Finance Minister Arun Jaitley have been travelling across the world to invite foreign investors.

"The stock markets have been at lifetime highs and the domestic institutional investors have invested huge amounts of money in the markets. While foreign investors are investing, domestic asset management companies have seen USD 18 billion of inflows in the last 12 months," he said.Contrast to this, domestic mutual funds had witnessed outflows of USD 4 billion over the past four years, Sikka said."Till now what used to happen is we needed foreign investors to come to India. The new trend that we are seeing is for the last 12 months, domestic inflows are far stronger and far better than compared to the foreign investors," he added.Reliance MF CIO Sunil Singhania said the Indian stock market had witnessed country-specific flows as opposed to emerging market-specific flows that tend to be agnostic to individual countries."[Within] emerging markets, India might be overweight and we don’t see any reason why this overweight will not continue," he said.It is not just FII flows, FDI capital inflows too is expected to remain strong, Ananth Narayan of Standard Chartered said."In the overall global landscape, India does shine as an oasis of relative calm right now, it does hold promise and I think the finance minister has managed to convey this overall picture."Narayan said that the recent trend of strong FDI inflows -- they were up 40 percent year-on-year -- is likely to continue."We are seeing global manufacturing majors including Foxconn etc make visits to India, so I think the FDI trend remains positive in the overall scheme of things."The summit organiser Asia Pacific Investors Cooperation (APIC) CEO Ana Sharp said it is a business platform created by and for Asian institutional investors including pension funds, sovereign wealth funds, government funds, social security systems, and insurance companies.

"These institutions represent APIC's private membership. APIC covers 22 Asia Pacific markets and the members currently present here at the Summit represent USD 10 trillion worth of Assets Under Management," she added. Finance Minister Arun Jaitley delivered keynote address at the summit.- With inputs from CNBC-TV18.