“Probably good news in terms of one country can break away from the supply constraints that the cartel usually imposes. The UAE is not a small supplier. It is an important development, which I would consider incrementally positive from the India’s point of view because it increases the supply optionalities,” he said.
At an event organised by the Madras Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Anantha Nageswaran spoke on the topic “Turning compulsions into strategic resilience amid geopolitical churn”. Later, he also had an interactive session with the audience.
On the impact of the West Asia Conflict, he said that he would wait at least until one quarter data was available before giving his quantitative responses.
Anantha Nageswaran said that the Indian rupee was oversold and undervalued. The rupee has been under pressure and hit a new low of Rs 94.85 per dollar on Wednesday.
“On a real effective exchange rate basis, although it has not reached the level it reached in 2012-13, it is actually quite competitive than what it was in 2020 when COVID began,” he said.
“From a fundamental perspective, you look at the proportion of external debt we carry short term, long term in terms of foreign exchange reserves and the fact that we are still generating USD 860 billion of exports between goods and services put together. So, if you look at macro fundamentals, our growth outlook this year definitely looks at the very minimum you are going to have a six handle in front of the decimal point in 2026-2027 if not 7 per cent as I mentioned before the conflict began,” Anantha Nageswaran, said.
“So, if you put these things together and with some of the valuation analysis that I did, I came to the conclusion that the rupee is attractive at these levels. If somebody has a three year or a five year horizon sitting abroad, whether he or she is a non-resident Indian or a pure non-resident, I would think that the Indian rupee at current levels is a good investment opportunity,” he said.