Emerging market funds have just enjoyed their largest monthly inflows in nearly two years, but some markets, such as India, have structural issues that can eat into returns on equity investments.
International investors owning local Indian stocks were subject to taxation on capital gains at a rate of 15 per cent for positions held for less than one year and of 10 per cent on longer-term holdings, said Dina Ting, head of global index portfolio management at Franklin Templeton, whose Franklin FTSE India Ucits ETF (FLXI) underperformed its benchmark FTSE India 30/18 Capped index by 4.05 percentage points in 2020, the year after its launch in 2019.
“This should be seen as an unavoidable cost and risk of investing in India,” Ting added.