The World’s Most-Loved Emerging Market Is Feeling Jittery
Foreigners have poured billions of dollars into Indian equities this year. But small caps have become pricey, and elections are around the corner.
Walk on by.
Photographer: Bloomberg/BloombergIndia is the world’s most-loved emerging market this year. Foreigners have poured in billions of dollars so far in 2023 even as they have pulled money from most other developing economies tracked by Bloomberg data. The surfeit of enthusiasm has also stored up apprehension: How much longer before this bastion of stability wobbles may depend on $4 flip-flops.
Where India has stood apart from most other emerging markets is in delivering high economic growth — 6%-plus expected in 2023 and 2024, according to the International Monetary Fund. It did so amid the turmoil caused by a strong dollar and a 525 basis-point increase in US interest rates. The spending power of the urban rich was visible in the $2,400–a-night hotel-room tariffs during the recently concluded Cricket World Cup final in Ahmedabad, in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s home state of Gujarat.