India Debt Market

Debt market refers to the financial market where investors buy and sell debt securities, mostly in the form of bonds. These markets are important source of funds, especially in a developing economy like India. India debt market is one of the largest in Asia. Like all other countries, debt market in India is also considered a useful substitute to banking channels for finance.

The most distinguishing feature of the debt instruments of Indian debt market is that the return is fixed. This means, returns are almost risk-free. This fixed return on the bond is often termed as the 'coupon rate' or the 'interest rate'. Therefore, the buyer (of bond) is giving the seller a loan at a fixed interest rate, which equals to the coupon rate.

Classification of Indian Debt Market

Indian debt market can be classified into two categories:

Government Securities Market (G-Sec Market): It consists of central and state government securities. It means that, loans are being taken by the central and state government. It is also the most dominant category in the India debt market.

Bond Market: It consists of Financial Institutions bonds, Corporate bonds and debentures and Public Sector Units bonds. These bonds are issued to meet financial requirements at a fixed cost and hence remove uncertainty in financial costs.

Advantages

The biggest advantage of investing in Indian debt market is its assured returns. The returns that the market offer is almost risk-free (though there is always certain amount of risks, however the trend says that return is almost assured). Safer are the government securities. On the other hand, there are certain amounts of risks in the corporate, FI and PSU debt instruments. However, investors can take help from the credit rating agencies which rate those debt instruments. The interest in the instruments may vary depending upon the ratings.

Another advantage of investing in India debt market is its high liquidity. Banks offer easy loans to the investors against government securities.

Disadvantages

As there are several advantages of investing in India debt market, there are certain disadvantages as well. As the returns here are risk free, those are not as high as the equities market at the same time. So, at one hand you are getting assured returns, but on the other hand, you are getting less return at the same time.

Retail participation is also very less here, though increased recently. There are also some issues of liquidity and price discovery as the retail debt market is not yet quite well developed.

Debt Instruments

There are various types of debt instruments available that one can find in Indian debt market.

Government Securities

It is the Reserve Bank of India that issues Government Securities or G-Secs on behalf of the Government of India. These securities have a maturity period of 1 to 30 years. G-Secs offer fixed interest rate, where interests are payable semi-annually. For shorter term, there are Treasury Bills or T-Bills, which are issued by the RBI for 91 days, 182 days and 364 days.

Corporate Bonds

These bonds come from PSUs and private corporations and are offered for an extensive range of tenures up to 15 years. There are also some perpetual bonds. Comparing to G-Secs, corporate bonds carry higher risks, which depend upon the corporation, the industry where the corporation is currently operating, the current market conditions, and the rating of the corporation. However, these bonds also give higher returns than the G-Secs.

Certificate of Deposit

These are negotiable money market instruments. Certificate of Deposits (CDs), which usually offer higher returns than Bank term deposits, are issued in demat form and also as a Usance Promissory Notes. There are several institutions that can issue CDs. Banks can offer CDs which have maturity between 7 days and 1 year. CDs from financial institutions have maturity between 1 and 3 years. There are some agencies like ICRA, FITCH, CARE, CRISIL etc. that offer ratings of CDs. CDs are available in the denominations of ` 1 Lac and in multiple of that.

Commercial Papers

There are short term securities with maturity of 7 to 365 days. CPs are issued by corporate entities at a discount to face value.

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