Neelkanth Mishra on link between market and government’s commitments towards road, defence & railways

economictimes.indiatimes.com:

Neelkanth Mishra, Chief Economist, Axis Bank; Head of Global Research, Axis Capital, says coming to “investment themes, I am observing that because everyone wants to invest in defence and railways, there is a very steady rise in price-to-earnings multiples without an appropriate visibility on what is happening with their own order books. Will they be able to participate in this? Will they be able to compete in this? Even on something like electronics, there is a very good probability that India's electronics ecosystem will continue to grow.”


Capex seems to be focused around infrastructure development. Road has been a resounding success. Now it is tilting towards defence and railways. While the shift is happening, equity markets have been mighty excited. We know about the rally in defence, railway and shipbuilding stocks. What is the right way of understanding these government commitments towards shipbuilding, road, defence, railways? Can you connect the equity market outlook?
The central government can control these sectors directly. National highways, railways, defence are central subjects and this is where the central government can play a big role. On the road side, it is unreasonable to expect that if you are already doing 15,000-16,000 km a year, you will be able to do much more than 18,000-20,000 km a year. So incremental growth in terms of the pace of construction at the national highway level may not really accelerate from here.

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