India’s domestic equity funds witnessed their first monthly net outflows in 11 months as investors pulled out 0.29 billion rupees in August, Morgan Stanley said in a research note on Thursday.
“This is only the third time that equity funds have reported net outflows over the past two years,” the firm said, adding that inflows in the first eight months of 2008 were up 66 per cent to 322 billion rupees from a year ago.
Equity assets, at $39.2 billion, were 30 per cent lower than Dec 2007 because of the fall in share values. India’s benchmark index is down about 30 per cent this year.
Indian funds as a whole saw an outflow of 4.4 billion rupees in August, primarily because of a net outflow of 4.2 billion rupees from fixed income funds, Morgan Stanley noted.
The 35-member industry managed about 5.4 trillion rupees at the end of August, data from the Association of Mutual Funds in India showed.