India and Foreign Institutional Investors

Abstract

Developing countries are no strangers to financial crises. The proclivity to crisis and to financial boom-bust cycles was especially evident in more financially open and deregulated developing economies. It is now well known that financial liberalization has resulted in an increase in financial fragility in developing countries, making them prone to periodic financial and currency crises, not just internal banking and related crises, and currency crises stemming from more open capital accounts. Greater freedom to invest, including in sensitive sectors such as real estate and stock markets, ability to increase exposure to particular sectors and individual clients and increased regulatory forbearance all lead to increased instances of financial failure. In addition, the emergence of universal banks or financial supermarkets increases the degree of entanglement of different agents within the financial system and increases the domino effects of individual financial failures. The global economic and financial situation is recovering slowly. The large fiscal deficits and high debt ratios coupled with slow economic growth have created unsettling conditions for business and have potential for causing great volatility in financial markets. It is hard to visualize strong economic growth in the advanced economies in 2010 and to a large extent in 2011. The implications of this, for India's strategy to return to the 9.0 per cent growth trajectory, are that public policy must promote business confidence and facilitate increased investment.This paper is focusing on the role of Foreign Institutional Investors on Indian economy.