A billion reasons to invest in India
IN all the hype surrounding China’s emergence as an economic superpower, India can sometimes appear relegated to the sidelines. Yet India, too, is a budding superpower in its own right. Its gross domestic product (GDP) has expanded from £16 billion in 1980 to £500 billion today, and its economy is now the fourth biggest in the world, in terms of purchasing power parity.

India’s rapid annual growth rate of more than 7 per cent is reflected in the performance of funds investing in the country. Since its launch in 2004, Fidelity’s India Focus fund has produced a return of 246 per cent for investors. But even this impressive showing is eclipsed by JPMorgan’s Indian investment trust, which has returned an extraordinary 735 per cent over five years.

This month the Indian Government, concerned about the dangers of a market “bubble”, stepped in to limit the amount of money that foreign investors can feed into the market, triggering a sharp correction in share prices.