MF industry may see uptrend by Oct-end: Crisil FundServices

NEW DELHI: The country's mutual fund industry is likely to see an uptrend by the end of this month as corporate houses are expected to pour in more money.

"Firstly, corporates withdrew (MF investments) to meet their advance tax payments and secondly banks pruned their investments to meet their quarter end balance sheet requirements on capital adequacy.

"These investments are expected to return into mutual funds in October as we have seen earlier in the year in months following a quarter," Crisil FundServices Director Krishnan Sitaraman said.

The assets under management (AUM) of the country's 36 fund houses fell by about one per cent top Rs 7.44 lakh crore. At the end of August AUM stood at Rs 7.51 lakh crore.

With Indian equity benchmark indices ending up nine per cent buoyed by strong liquidity, Crisil's mutual fund indices ended September gave positive returns.

The equity category, represented by Crisil Fund-eX, gave gains of 7.85 per cent, followed by Crisil Fund-bX, the index for balanced funds, which reported returns of 6.52 per cent.

Among the debt indices, Crisil MF-Gilt (the gilt funds index) reported the highest returns (0.93 per cent), followed by Crisil Fund-dX, the long-term bond funds index (0.67 per cent). Crisil STBEX, the index for short-term bond funds, gave returns of 0.54 per cent, while Crisil-LX, the index for liquid funds, saw returns of 0.32 per cent, said a release.