FII outflows to persist in near-term

Brad Durham, managing director of Emergingportfolio.com Fund Research says that India country funds saw an outflow of $700 million. Durham also adds that foreign fund outflows would persist in near-term.

He further states that the first week of outflow from BRICs funds since October 2005 stands at USD 360 million. Also, HSBC India Equity Fund saw an outflow of USD 350 million.

According to Durham, HSBC, Aberdeen, DWS and Pictet India Funds were among the large sellers.

Excerpts from CNBC - TV18's exclusive interview with Brad Durham:

What have you been witnessing in the last week?  Are those outflows from the emerging market easing a bit, or do they remain fairly significant?

I think it has been a pretty rough week for fund flows from emerging markets.  It has not really showed any signs of easing off. The latest weekly data, at the end of Wednesday May 24, showed that there is a total of $5 billion net outflows from the emerging market equity funds that we track. That is about 1.8 per cent of total assets.  So, it has been the strongest week of outflows from May 2004.  I would expect outflows would persist atleast for the foreseeable future, until the investor confidence is restored. 

What sort of outflows have you seen from BRIC funds, in specific and redemption pressures for those funds?

We saw around $360 million net outflows from these funds with total assets now of about $9.5 billion.  The India country fund, which we track, had about $16 billion in total assets going into the last week. They lost about $700 million net outflows in the most recent weekly periods. So, combined with their double-digit negative performance for the week, $3 billion is locked off the value of those funds.  

Specifically on India, could you outline some of the India funds or India products, which have seen some redemptions or outflow of money in the last couple of weeks?

In the funds that are seeing, the biggest outflows tend to be those that they are just the biggest funds. HSBC India Equity Fund in the latest weeks has seen big outflows of around $350 million in the latest week alone.  It is a fund of about $4.5 billion in total assets.

Aberdeen India Opportunities Funds, Deutsche Asset Management funds, DWS India fund, and also Pictet India Funds saw some significant redemptions. These are some of the top funds. Ten of all Asia ex-Japan funds saw outflows in the most recent weeks and there were number of India funds among those.