Mutual Funds Investing In India
India's GDP has grown by around 8% a year for the past three years. Housing prices have gone up by a third in some cities, and housing loans have grown at a 25% rate. Some were worried that this could only lead to a slowdown and crash, but the country's finance minister just announced two days ago that the Indian economy is doing fine and is not overheating. India's overall economy is the fourth-largest in the world when measured by purchasing power parity. Its GDP is $3.6 trillion. It is growing second-fastest of the major economies of the world, with the growth of GDP at 8.9%. Due to its large population of over a billion people, the per capita income is only about $3,300 in purchasing power parity. It has over 1.03 billion people and is the second-largest country in the world; one out of six people on Earth is an Indian. The population has slowed its growth rate since the 1950s, despite better health care for the elderly, which is good for the country economically (as there are fewer people to feed and clothe). Improved health care, higher rates of literacy and self-sustaining food production has enabled India not to suffer from its huge population as much as some countries have.
India's economy is diverse and its citizens have become involved in many different types of industries. Many opportunities were opened to the country by the rise of the Internet and personal computing, because many of its citizens are technologically intelligent and can speak English well. India's government was formerly very socialist; early in the 1990s, the government opened India to foreign trade and investment, which has allowed for the economic growth that the country is experiencing. Reducing government control has led to success of a more market-based economy. Poverty has declined due to these reforms, but is still a major problem in a country of so many people. India has also allocated large sums of government money each year to repair and replace India's infrastructure, much of which is still left over from British colonial times. Each year, railways and transportation systems are improved. India is second in the world for road construction, spending more than twice what China does. Compared to China, India spends little on telecoms, real estate, power, construction, and transportation. These compose 20% of China's GDP but only 6% of India's GDP. India's GDP growth rate would be even higher if it spent more in these areas. To try to stimulate growth, the Indian government has allowed some of these sectors to be privatised. The largest sector of Indian GDP, at 53%, is the services sector, which is also growing worldwide. The middle-class population, with 300 million, is larger than that of either the US or Europe and is a ripe consumer market. "Setting up shop in India" "INDIA's retail revolution is at last getting started. At the moment 97% of retail sales are made in more than 15m tiny mom-and-pop stores, mostly of less than 500 square feet (46 square metres). But now Reliance Industries, the country's largest business group, is to spend 250 billion rupees ($5.5 billion) on big new shops over five years, starting on November 3rd when it will open 11 convenience stores in the southern city of Hyderabad. And big foreign companies are moving in too. The government bans them from selling direct to individuals, but they have found a side door: starting wholesale and sourcing companies which supply a local retail partner. The first to do this, last month, was Australia's Woolworths, in league with Tata, India's second-largest firm. Tesco, from Britain, is expected to follow soon, and Wal-Mart and France's Carrefour are also thought to be searching for a way in." "For overseas companies looking for growth outside sluggish domestic markets, India's retail business is one of the most attractive. Consumer demand is booming as the government's steps to liberalise the economy have produced GDP growth of around 8-9% a year. Technopak, a Delhi-based retail consultancy, expects retail sales of $250-300 billion now to rise to nearly $430 billion by 2010. Modern retailers' share will rise from just 3% now to 16-18%, it says." For more information on mutual funds investing in India, see the website at http://www.offshoreinvestingsecrets.com
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