India´s first Latin America Equity Fund

Here is the news from today´s Business Standard of India

ING Investment Management India has launched India's first Latin America Equity Fund, an open ended Fund of Funds (FoF) Scheme for Indian investors.

The Scheme opens on June 19, 2008 and closes on July 10, 2008. The scheme will primarily invest in ING's existing Luxembourg domiciled fund thereby seeking to provide an Indian investor long-term capital appreciation and exposure to countries which are amongst the fastest growing economies in the emerging market space. The Lux fund will try and achieve this by investing primarily in stocks of companies based out of Latin American countries or stocks of companies deriving a majority of their revenues from Latin American economies.

Vineet K Vohra, managing director and CEO, ING Investment Management India said, "The emerging markets as a whole have held up fairly well considering that they are generally volatile than the US indices.
All emerging countries have some political risk associated with them, some much higher than others. However, what makes Latin America so attractive is the stable government in place in the recent years and their pro-growth policies. This is one part of the backdrop that isn't always visible to investors, but it plays an important role in medium & long term stability."
Latin America is a lucrative market on account of infrastructure investments, robust domestic demand, strong private consumption & surging commodity exports due to increasing demand from countries like India and China. Valuations for most of the Latin American economies look attractive as compared to their counterparts in the emerging markets.

This adds an additional dimension to India´s business outreach to Latin America reflecting Indian confidence and optimism on the prospects of the region.