We have high hopes for India: CLSA

We have high hopes for India: CLSA


CLSA, majority owned by Crédit Agricole (France), is one of Asia Pacific's most highly rated independent equity brokers and financial-services groups, focused on providing broking, investment banking and asset management to global corporates.CLSA Capital Partners is the firm’s alternative asset-management arm, comprising funds with more than $2.5 bn under management.

In an exclusive interview, ET NOW caught up with Richard Pyvis, Executive Chairman, CLSA Capital Partners on the East Asian models of growth, the 'middle class' purchase potential and other economic pointers in the Apac region.

Let us talk about demographics first. Here is how we see it here from perch here. Japan is old with China, of course the key demographic question is whether it is going to become rich before it gets old and with India, we are seeing an enormous bulge in the supply of young workers without nearly enough capital available to absorb them all, so are you seeing the demographic picture any differently from this?

Richard Pyvis : Yes, demographics is a really big issue affecting Asia. We have got one about a third of the world population sitting here in the region from India or out in the west through the Japan in the Northeast and the demographic across that region is quite different. If I start with Japan, Japan is a really interesting story because you have got a demographic profile shape like a champagne glass with very few younger workers coming into the available workforce. Interesting thing there of course is that with that lack of supply, do you need to have positive growth in Japan. Perhaps there is an argument that says that negative growth is a good thing or is a sensible thing.

Alternately, you have got to import labour. Then we zip over to China and China has a demographic list or little bit like that and I have seen some numbers that say that by about 2015-2018, we would start to get a labour shortage in China on the assumption that capital and technology remain pretty much as they are in their current application in China. That is likely to change and so any forecast on the Chinese demographic and its impact on its productive capability is probably going to change over the course of the next 5-10 years.

Then we will wonder how apart from the fact that you guys are way too good at cricket which causes me a lot of grief from time to time coming from Australia, you have got a fantastic demographic with an enormous supply of youth coming into the market and your challenge is really to enable the entry of that used into the labour market and to make sure that labour force is well educated and skilled as it can be so that India gets the greatest productivity out of that labour availability.

Coming to middle class theme that you have identified, where do you think that theme is playing out to its fullest potential?

Richard Pyvis : I could not help overhearing your earlier comments on FMCG sector in India and the same comments could probably apply right across the region, particularly in the younger population countries and in particular India and Indonesia. So that is certainly a sector that is going to benefit from increases in per capita GDP, increases in disposable income, greater propensity for consumption. So we are going to see that sector in particular benefit from this emerging middle class that is occurring right before our eyes right across the region.

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Src: Economictimes.indiatimes.com