swanand kelkar
Why Morgan Stanley remains overweight on consumer stocks in 2017
In a chat with ET Now, Amay Hattangadi, ED, and Swanand Kelkar, ED, discuss Morgan Stanley Investment Management's outlook for 2017 Edited excerpts: In your large portfolio, you are overweight on consumer stocks now and distinctly much higher than what the MSCI allocation would be. Why is it that you are so bullish again in a pocket where it is difficult to predict how the growth will shape up? Amay Hattangadi: When we look at consumers in India, we look at it as a combination of consumer staples, consumer discretionary and the consumer lending segment within financials. When we say we are overweight on consumer stocks, it is a combination of these sectors and this was one growth engine for the last two or three years. At a time when the corporate capex cycle was anaemic, there was surplus capacity in India and Indian industry was operating at about 70% overall capacity utilisation.