Budget 2010 comes up with Good Investment Opportunities for NRIs

India’s budget yet again demonstrates to NRIs that investing in their homeland is probably the best option right now. The West is still struggling to climb out of one of its deepest recessions and provides low returns, while India’s growth story promises healthy returns. Surely, it’s time to wake up and smell the Indian coffee. Soon after the budget was read, the Indian stock exchange gave it a thumbs up sign without delay as the market climbed up by a hefty 175 points. The return on Indian equities in the past year has been calculated at 87.4 percent by The Times of India. If an NRI invested in real estate stocks for the last year, the returns would be a whopping 139 percent

The auto sector was not far behind as the returns on wheels was 184 percent. Again, consumer durables and the IT sector would have raked in returns at 150 percent and 125 percent respectively. Now, where would an NRI get his investment almost doubled in one year? As far as returns on fixed deposits are concerned, NRIs can reap much higher returns of eight percent for term deposits if they convert their currencies into Indian rupees. This compares with two to three percent when they keep their funds in hard currencies in India or abroad. Considering that over 100 banks have failed in the US following the meltdown and a number of British banks were also shaken. NRIs hastily sent their savings to India and the country’s foreign exchange reserves are hovering at a bulging $280 billion now.