Birla Sun Life MF eyes Rs 6,000 cr equity assets next fiscal

Birla Sun Life Mutual Fund aims to garner around Rs 6,000 crore of equity assets in the next financial year, an increase of 40 per cent from the current level, to raise the overall pie of this segment.

With Rs 90,000 crore of average assets under management (AUM), Birla Sun Life is the fourth largest fund house with an equity asset of over Rs 12,000 crore as of now. This makes it the seventh largest MF in terms of equity base.“We have seen net inflows of around Rs 600 crore in equities from April till date...we want to cross $1 billion-mark (Rs 6,000 crore) under this asset base by next fiscal,” Birla Sun Life MF Chief Executive A Balasubramanian told PTI.

Referring to the steps taken up by Birla Sun Life to expand asset base, Balasubramanian said: “We are stepping up our efforts with more distribution engagement...our focus is also to increase penetration in B-15 markets.”He said the private MF house is looking at increasing the equity investor base by turning inactive folios into active ones. The fund house is also opening zero account folios of investors who can invest in MF schemes in future.

RBI to hold rates tomorrow; see GDP sub-5% in Q4FY14: HSBC

All eyes are once again on Reserve Bank’s Raghuram Rajan as he gets ready to announce year end policy on Tuesday. Leif Eskesen, Chief Economist-India & Asean, HSBC expects the RBI to maintain status quo tomorrow. However, he does not think the central bank’s tightening cycle has ended.

 He says HSBC's PMI indicator has firmed to some extent and inflation is moving in the right direction - headline inflation has come down though a significant part of it is food inflation and core inflation continues to remain relatively stable, which is a problem. But disinflationary tendencies that RBI was looking at in its forward guidance as a precondition for remaining on hold last time, seems to have been fulfilled, hence maybe RBI will maintain status quo, he explains.

He says RBI’s monetary policy needs to be tighter going ahead than it is now if it wants inflation to be 6 percent or lower from 2016 onwards. He expects consumer price index or CPI to be below 8 percent by 2014-end. He expects to see some easing in core inflation, but not much. Eskesen further expects gross domestic product or GDP to be sub-5 percent in the fourth quarter of 2014.

Current account deficit may be contained at $33 b this fiscal

The current account deficit (CAD) for 2013-14 is likely to be contained at around $33 billion, much lower than the initial projection of $70 billion and around $88 billion of 2012-13.

One of the two primary components of the balance of payments, CAD is the sum of the balance of trade (net revenue on exports minus payments for imports), factor income (earnings on foreign investments minus payments made to foreign investors) and cash transfers.

“The year could end with CAD of 1.8 per cent of GDP,” Saumitra Chaudhuri, Planning Commission Member, told Business Line. The deficit is down mainly due to significantly lower gold import and recovery in exports. This new estimate has also come amidst the rupee strengthening and breaching the 60/$ mark, and the RBI adding dollars to the forex reserves. Now, it is expected that lower CAD will further boost the rupee.

The latest estimate is better than the $40 billion Finance Minister P Chidambaram had projected in a statement on March 7. It is also close to Nomura’s projection of $34.7 billion. It may be noted that CAD in first nine months (April-December) of current fiscal stood at $31.2 billion.