In the last one year, the mutual fund has added 13 new offices under its portal, compared to one office last year and manages six products compared to last year's two. Prudential ICICI plans to launch a gilt fund and an open-ended equity linked saving scheme by the end of the current fiscal. The ELSS scheme is opening tomorrow.

Reflecting on the market's appetite, AMC managing director Ajay Srinivasan said investors are still looking for safe and secure avenues for investments, and so the debt market should witness a lot of development. "This can be gauged from the fact that the ratio of investments of debt to equity for the period ended June 30 was 75:25 ascompared to 44:56 for the period ended September 1999", said Srinivasan.

Talking about the economy, the chief investment officer Dileep Madgavkar said that interest rates will not move up or down in the next six months. "This is because 50 per cent of the government borrowing programme is already over, even though it is felt that it will overshoot its target of Rs 84,000 crore due to the unforeseen circumstances. This will lead to an increased fiscal deficit. But looking at the broad scenario, aggregate deposits have grown by 18 per cent, the non-food credit (if taken into account, the investments made by banks in paper) shot to 17 per cent. And given the liquidity in the system, yields will not be impacted much for the next six months", said Madgavkar.

Madgavkar added that given the upsurge in the economy and better corporate performance, the lower interest rate scenario should give a further impetus to equity markets.

The head of marketing at Prudential ICICI AMC, Roshini Bakshi said :"We haveobserved that with the increase in offices to semi-urban towns and mini-cities, the small investor is listening more and moving into the mutual fund products". Bakshi said that in smaller towns like Guwahati, Cochin and Mangalore among other smaller centres, the investor had no avenue besides bank deposits and with the investor having more time to listen, the shift to funds was slowly taking place.

June 1999 marks the first year of operations since Prudential ICICI launched its first range of open-ended products. The MF now manages an open-ended income plan, a growth plan, a liquid plan and an FMCG sector fund, added to the earlier funds namely Premier and Power.