Brian Jacobsen, senior investment strategist at Wells Fargo Asset Management, doesn't expect India to have a balanced Budget but is hopeful that the government will keep the fiscal deficit under control.

Share Market Live

NSE

“Broadly speaking, for India, I think that a lot of people are looking for them to continue with opening up their markets as far as to competition with trade policy, balancing the Budget, we don’t expect that they will have a balanced Budget but at least to get the deficit under control. My guess is that with the interim Budget, we will probably see a little bit more deficit spending and that could be slightly negative as far as the way foreign investors view yields and investment opportunities in India and it might be somewhat detrimental to the rupee outlook,” he told CNBC-TV18 on Thursday.

For Jacobsen, there's lot of uncertainty ahead of general elections in May but still India remains their top pick for long term.

"India is at the top of the list for the long-term, in terms of investing for over the next 10 years but in terms of investing over the next 10 months, there is a lot of uncertainty as to how the general elections 2019 will play out," he said.

"One of the big concerns is about the policy outlook for India, both on the monetary policy and on the fiscal policy side," he added.

With regards to the interim Budget and his expectations, Jacobsen said, “We do pay attention to the budget and that is one of our concerns about investing in India and across a lot of emerging markets is the focus tends to be a little bit too much on what are these budgets. We would rather focus on the fundamentals of the businesses that you can invest in and not necessarily how the future – whether it is over the next 12 months or the next few years – be so heavily dictated by swings in the budget".

First Published:Jan 31, 2019 11:16 AM IST