RBI seen cutting repo rate for first time in 3 years: poll

The Reserve Bank of India is likely to cut its repo rate for the first time in three years in an attempt to lift sagging economic growth, even as high oil and food prices remain a challenge to managing inflation, a Reuters poll showed.

Of 20 analysts polled, 17 expect the RBI to cut the repo rate by 25 basis points to 8.25 percent on April 17, while three see it unchanged at 8.50 percent.

The RBI has held its key interest rate steady since its policy review in mid-December, after raising it 13 times from March 2010 to tame high inflation, most recently in October. Its last rate cut was in April 2009.

"The driving factor for a repo cut is basically to pull down the cost of funds. The slowdown in the economy is coming from a drop in investments, and that has to be reversed," said Saugata Bhattacharya, an economist with Axis Bank.

Of 19 respondents, 13 expect no cut next week in the cash reserve ratio (CRR) requirement for banks, or the share of deposits lenders have to maintain with the RBI.

Only four respondents forecast a 50 bps cut in CRR on April 17, while two see a 25 basis point cut.

In January, the RBI cut CRR by 50 bps, and further reduced it by 75 bps in March to 4.75 percent to ease tight liquidity in the banking system ahead of advance tax payments by companies.

Economists have scaled back their expectations for rate cuts in the fiscal year that started this month but have increased their expectations for cuts in CRR since a poll in March.

The median estimate for the repo rate in March 2013 now stands at 7.75 percent, higher than the estimate of 7.50 percent in a poll last month. Similarly, the median estimate for CRR is 4 percent, compared with 4.25 percent in March.

India's economy grew at just 6.1 percent in the December quarter, the slowest in nearly three years.

High food inflation is likely to pinch Indians at least until July as fruit and vegetable output shrinks, hurt by rising temperatures and dry conditions, while edible oil and pulses prices are rallying on lower production and a more expensive world market.

The wholesale price index, the main gauge of inflation, edged up a faster-than-expected 6.95 percent from a year earlier in February. Analysts are keenly awaiting the March inflation data to be announced a day before the RBI's policy.

However, non-food manufactured inflation is likely to remain low, which will offset some of the impact of high food prices, analysts said.

Further inflationary pressure could emerge if India cuts subsidies on diesel and cooking fuels, and if state oil retailers raise the price of petrol to reflect the rise in global crude prices.

Source: http://in.reuters.com/article/2012/04/10/india-rbi-poll-repo-rate-cut-idINDEE83906M20120410

Fidelity investors: Exit and reinvest elsewhere

Investors in Fidelity schemes should look for an exit in the 30-day no-load window that will be available to them. Returns of L&T Mutual Fund have been nothing to be confident about

L&T Mutual Fund (MF) recently came into the Indian fund industry, having been setup through the acquisition of DBS Cholamandalam Mutual Fund in 2010. Chola was a running a poor management and investors entering the L&T Mutual Fund fold have not done any better. With the acquisition of Fidelity Mutual Fund, one of the better performing fund houses, L&T MF has become the 13th largest fund house up from 24, out of a total of 43 fund houses currently present. But the sad news for investors in the schemes of Fidelity MF is that the sale to L&T MF does not include the fund management team. Fidelity’s fund management team would be there until L&T MF builds its team to manage the newly acquired assets.

The fund management of Fidelity MF has been much better than that of L&T MF. As seen in the performance compared to the benchmark, the returns of L&T funds have fallen short of the benchmark on a number of occasions, whereas the funds of Fidelity have outperformed their respective benchmarks on all the occasions for the one-year, two-year, three-year and five-year periods ending 31 March 2012. The investors of Fidelity wouldn’t want the L&T fund management team handling their investments seeing this performance of the fund house. Investors who are worried about their investments and those who are doubtful of the fund management team of L&T should look for an exit in the 30-day window given to them where they will be charged no load for exit.

Venugopal Manghat recently joined as vice president & co head - equity investments at L&T Mutual Fund. He was earlier the head of equities at Tata Asset Management. He was the fund manager of Tata Pure Equity and Tata Equity Opportunities—two equity funds of Tata MF which have done well in the past. He took over managing L&T Growth fund from Pankaj Gupta last month. Would he be able to turn around the performance of L&T equity schemes? One would just have to wait and watch. At the same time Shobheta Manglik has joined as assistant vice president & fund manager-fixed income. She has been jointly managing the few of the debt-oriented funds and has an experience of over 10 years. Pankaj Gupta with an experience of over 10 years has been managing three of the equity funds since September 2010 and Anant Deep Katare, who has over nine years of related experience, has been managing L&T Hedged Equity fund and L&T Midcap Fund since October 2007. L&T Mutual Fund would have probably done well had Sanjay Sinha, who came in from SBI Mutual Fund, stuck around. But he joined in September 2008 and quit in August 2011.

Compare this to the current fund management of Fidelity. All the equity diversified funds of Fidelity are co-managed. Anirudh Gopalakrishnan, who has a work experience of over 10 years, is the common fund manager for all the four schemes and has been managing these funds for foreign securities investments since October 2010. He, along with Sandeep Kothari, who has an experience of 17 years, manages Fidelity Equity Fund and Fidelity India Growth Fund and along with Nitin Bajaj, who has an experience of 12 years, manages Fidelity India Special Situations Fund and Fidelity India Value fund. Fidelity does have a more experienced team but unfortunately they would not be managing the schemes once L&T Mutual Fund acquires them.

Source: http://www.moneylife.in/article/fidelity-investors-exit-and-reinvest-elsewhere/24872.html