Election Results 2019: Motilal Oswal’s Raamdeo Agrawal On Modi’s Second Term

Market veteran Raamdeo Agrawal expects the Bharatiya Janata Party-led government’s second term to see growth fuelled by reforms initiated by Prime Minister Modi in the last five years.

“Continuity of the current regime is not only asserted but also with little more weight,” Agrawal, managing director at Motilal Oswal Financial Services, told BloombergQuint in an interview. “We are going to see a lot of incomplete projects to be taken up.” They always prepare for a little longer term. The goods and services tax was implemented just two years before when a lot of governments would have not done it keeping election in mind, he said. All the junk in public sector lenders has been cleared and now this is the time for growth and the economy should do distinctly different, he said.

In the next five years, the commitment to be clean and no tolerance for big-ticket corruption will continue. The basic model of the entrepreneurship and economy will remain the same or would be strengthened, he said. “The life of bad guys will become worse.” The market, he said, will also respect and will try to value companies that are more compliant.

On Jobs

Jobs remains one of the biggest issues for this economy. People want good jobs and there are opportunities as well, he said. “But the issue is whether our policies are conducive to set up businesses very quickly.” India has managed to move up the ranks in ease of doing business, but the issue is to identify where the problem is, whether credit is clogged, or permissions are clogged, and the bureaucracy also has to be reformed, he said.

Modi’s Re-Election

• Commitment towards no tolerance to big-ticket corruption is a positive for Modi.
• Expecting a stronger National Democratic Alliance team to take charge of the second innings.
• Economic push has to be the first on the government’s agenda.

Key Highlights:

• Earnings have becoming very polarised in the last five years.
• Long-term investing is prevalent in strong franchises.
• Mining presents a huge opportunity once regulatory hurdles are overcome.
• Consolidation in the financial space will continue.
• High quality small-to-medium enterprises are suffering due to lack of fresh capital.
• Public sector banks have a huge opportunity to become better rather than become bigger.
• Growth in autos is a temporary hit. It is pent-up demand which will translate once the economy is back on track.
• The government needs to provide liquidity to quality companies.
• Infrastructure will gather massive pace and more ambitious projects will come on stream.
• If IL&FS would not have happened, it would have been a very different economy.

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