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Arvind Chari

Arvind Chari

Sep 10, 2026

BhuvanHOST
44:36
So they have no jobs right now.
44:39
I don't know whether I have a great view on it, but the way I think about it is that services will actually create way more jobs than manufacturing.
44:48
Because the manufacturing of 25, 30 years ago and the manufacturing of today is very different.
44:54
Today, you have automated robotic, even in India, there are so many of this completely zero manpower, zero man, man, completely automated robotic manufacturing.
45:06
And manufacturing was never a very large share of employment anywhere.
45:09
Like it could have been a large share of GDP as a value add, but not a very large share of employment, especially as we've become automated and technology enabled.
45:19
And that's actually even going to increase.

16 MINS LATER

BhuvanHOST
61:06
Plus, I still have to contend with rupee depreciation and the capital gains taxes.
8:38
So what is the implication of that?
8:40
The first implication is also that if you see of the twenty-one, twenty-five, one twenty-seven billion, I would assume about eighty to hundred billion is leverage and about twenty-five, thirty billion is actual flows by non-resident Indians.
8:53
Which also means that foreign banks or Indian offshore bank balance sheets have exposure or in banking balance called India risk of about a hundred billion dollars over and above what they had before sitting on their balance sheet.
9:05
It's not a very, very big amount, but it is sizable.
9:07
The fact that foreign banks were willing to give loans at one% spread because they are charging five to five and a half percent as leverage cost, and the bank's own cost of borrowing would have been about four% because this is a credit risk-free instrument.
9:21
It's not a Indian sovereign borrowing, but it is essentially bankrolled by the Indian sovereign in terms of the swap risk and essentially is, there's effectively very zero credit risk.
9:30
So their cost of borrowing also would have been that much lesser internally for a bank.
14:14
My question is, would they have thought through, and if so, in what way, from your experience, the whole, let's say, the downstream impact of these additional flows or this big flow that we've seen?
13:52
I spoke with Arvind Chari, chief investment strategist at Q India UK affiliate of Quantum Advisors India, and based out of London, and I began by asking him how he was seeing the action in the bond market.
14:04
The way to think about it is, A, it's a time-tested thing that India does, right? Whenever you have a issue on the currency and you need capital flows, you tap your non-resident Indians.
14:14
We've done that in '92, '98, 2003, 2013.
14:19
So this has been a thing that has always worked for India to be able to tap the non-resident Indians for, to augment the capital flows.
14:26
I would like to take it from three different perspectives because there are three different aspects of what the government and the RBI are trying to do to augment capital flows.
14:34
The first, of course, is the FCNR, Foreign Currency Non-Resident deposit flows.
14:39
In 2013, when the RBI and the government did this, we actually almost raised $26 billion back then in a very similar short period of time, so it can be sizable.

8 MINS LATER

22:42
So is that because the markets will respond to actual flows and not really speculate, unlike in maybe equities, or will it take much more?
10:37
And I began by asking him how he was reading the government's call for austerity measures and how that could or if it could affect market sentiment.
10:46
You should read it as a function of imports, right? So if you look at postpone the purchase of gold, reduce your fuel consumption, reduce edible oil in cooking, you know, farmers to use organic farming or natural farming.
11:00
These are all gold, fertilizers, crude oil.
11:03
These are all aspects where we have very large import dependence.
11:07
So it's coming from that perspective that, you know, we'll have to reduce our import dependence.
11:11
And that comes from, I think, the worry that the government is seeing in the trajectory of the Indian rupee.
11:17
You've seen the Indian rupee depreciate quite a lot over the last 18 months.
14:36
So therefore, I mean, what's the current mood sitting in London where you are and from a foreign institutional investor lens, given all of this? I mean, not that it changes on a daily basis, but what's your current reading?

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