India Needs Strategic Income Not Hot Money, Says Moelis’ Manisha Girotra

Foreign direct investment inflows, along with state-owned banks resorting to quick action for improving their asset quality, make India lucrative for global investors, Moelis & Company India Chief Executive Officer Manisha Girotra told BloombergQuint.

The global investors that the investment bank caters to, continue to hold India at a high pedestal, and consider it potent enough for investing, despite the slow GDP growth and ballooning fiscal deficit, she said on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum's India Economic Summit in New Delhi.

Even though the National Company Law Tribunal is ‘overloaded' to recognise and clear off bad debts, it is advisable for them to speed up the process as a lot of global and stressed funds' investors are eyeing the assets closely, she added.

Citing the Essar-Rosneft deal as an example for global investors' renewed interest in India, Girotra said that these assets are of ‘high quality', hence their timely management would prove to be advantageous for India.

“We have certainly moved on from the times when someone sneezed in North Korea, and things went off for us,” said Girotra. 

Girotra expects the benefits of structural reforms such as the Goods and Services Tax implementation, and demonetisation to start kicking in after three-four quarters. However, she warns that the next two-three quarters will continue to remain challenging.