A $45 billion bet on Modi’s India is rapidly unwinding

Bloomberg

Global investors are starting to fall out of love with Narendra Modi.
After pouring $45 billion into India’s stock market over the past six years on hopes that Modi would unleash the country’s economic potential, international money managers are now unwinding those wagers at the fastest pace on record. They’ve sold $4.5 billion of Indian shares since June, on course for the biggest quarterly exodus since at least 1999.
“The euphoria around Modi before 2014 has tapered off,” said Salman Ahmed, the London-based chief investment strategist at Lombard Odier Investment Managers, which oversees about $52 billion.
It’s hard to fault investors for losing faith. India’s economic growth has decelerated for five straight quarters to the weakest level since early 2013, one year before Modi became prime minister. And the 5 percent headline number for the second quarter may actually understate how painful the slowdown has become. Car sales are sinking at the fastest pace on record, capital investment has plunged, the unemployment rate has surged to a 45-year-high and the nation’s banking system is hamstrung by the world’s worst bad-loan ratio. The oil-price spike adds yet another headwind for a country that imports most of its crude.
While Modi isn’t sitting idly by as the economy weakens, investors say he’s been slow to act on a long list of needed reforms that includes selling stakes in state-owned companies and revamping the nation’s labour laws.
The growing worry is that India could be headed for a structural slowdown that pummels the country’s $2 trillion stock market, throws a wrench into growth plans of international companies from Amazon.com to Netflix, and makes it increasingly difficult for Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party to deliver jobs for the millions of young Indians who enter the workforce every year.