Foreign Portfolio Investors (FPIs) have withdrawn around Rs 48,000 crore from Indian capital markets in the first half of the current year, making it the highest outflow in a decade. The steep outflow could be attributed to high crude oil prices and trade war worries.
The updated depositories showed a large chunk of the sum was withdrawn from the debt markets, nearly Rs 41,433 crore and a net amount of Rs 6,430 crore from equities during January-June period, taking the total outflow to Rs 47,836 crore.
The latest outflow is the biggest since January-June 2008 when FPIs had withdrawn Rs 24,758 crore from the capital markets including equity and debt. Perhaps, the latest withdrawals are much higher than the outflow of Rs 41,216 crore witnessed in the entire 2008 — during the global financial crisis. This is only the second time when FPIs had taken a sluggish stance on the capital markets in first half of the year.
"FPI outflow and inflow is dependent on many macro and micro factors. Our macros are very closely linked to the price of crude oil, which is the largest import bill for India. Increase in crude oil leads to an increased current account deficit and high domestic inflation. Rising current account deficit is putting pressure on INR exchange rates and higher domestic inflation will put upward pressure on interest rates. Weaker exchange rates and higher interest rates make dollar return weaker for FPIs, which leads to withdrawal of funds," PTI quoted Rajeev Srivastava, Reliance Securities, Head of Retail Broking, as saying.
The United States Federal Reserves' decision to hike the interest rate has also attracted the investors to pull out their money form the bond markets of the emerging economies. Fed reserve is also expected further hike the interest rate in this year.
The current year has witnessed high volatility in FPI flows in the Indian Market. In January, FPIs invested a net sum of Rs 22,272 crore in the capital market. However, in February, there were net sellers to the tune of Rs 11,674 crore. In contrast, they again went bullish in March and put in Rs 2,662 crore. They took a bearish stance in April and the momentum continued till June.
