After our Chamber’s highly successful India Mission 2016 that concluded in January, Canada-India business relations continue to surge with Ontario Premier Hon. Kathleen Wynne and Prince Edward Islands Premier Hon. H. Wade MacLauchlan leading separate business and trade missions to India.

Our mission focused on four key sectors – Life Sciences, Food and Beverages, Tourism and Hospitality, and Smart Cities. These are the sunrise sectors for Canada-India trade relations. Our members will recall that during Indo-Canada Chamber of Commerce’s India Mission 2016 we signed a series of path-breaking MoUs with state governments, business chambers and other institutions; more importantly, even our delegates signed commercial agreements for future collaboration with counterparts in India.

Hon. Patrick Brown, MPP and Leader of the Ontario PC Party had accompanied ICCC’s India Mission 2016. He along with other caucus members of the Ontario PC Party had also met India’s Prime Minister Hon. Narendra Modi during that trip. “It was a great opportunity to catch up with my good friend and ‘brother’ Narendra Modi, and highlight the multitude of trade opportunities between our two countries. There are more than one billion consumers in India – Ontario needs to access that market,” Hon. Brown had said after the meeting with the Indian Prime Minister.

As a non-partisan organization whose mandate is to promote Canada-India bilateral trade relations, our Chamber wholeheartedly welcomes the efforts Hon. Kathleen Wynne has undertaken to foster our province’s relations with India. After the then Premier Dalton McGuinty’s India visit in 2010, Hon. Wynne has opened doors on several areas of cooperation between Ontario and India, and especially in the sphere of developing Smart Cities. 

Indian equities are already one of the most popular investments among fund managers globally. However, Indian bonds are also growing in attractiveness as an option for high-quality, high-yielding fixed-income investments – making them a perfect complement for investors seeking to capitalize on opportunities in the world’s fastest-growing economy.

On Tuesday, February 2, 2016, the Reserve Bank of India kept its key benchmark interest rate at 6.75%. The move was widely viewed as accommodative and pushed Indian bond yields to their highest levels in almost six months. The yield on sovereign bonds due in May, 2025 climbed six basis points to close at 7.85% in Mumbai, according to prices from the Reserve Bank of India’s trading platform. With an average yield of approximately 7.8%, Indian government bonds offer a spread which is almost 6% greater than similarly dated Government of Canada bonds.

While higher yields are typically associated with riskier bonds, this is not the case for Indian bonds, as more than 90% of India’s bond issues, both sovereign and corporate debt, are rated investment-grade or higher. Although Indian bond yields are expected to fall on the back of further anticipated interest-rate cuts by the Reserve Bank of India, they will still remain high compared to low-yielding bonds issued by developed countries such as Canada and the U.S.

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