India - the next big thing?

Just read a nice big article on India - India’s Economy Hits What Has To Be A Very Welcome “Soft Patch”

For those of you with money in emerging markets this may be of interest. It's got lots of nice graphs and some particularly incisive information about the demography of the country versus China.

For instance, this one on the working age population of India vs China clearly shows that India will have a large advantage in the amount of people available to work from 2025 onwards. That is of course if they have jobs..

But with a growing GDP India looks like being the next engine of the world economy in the coming years.

Of course India has loads of problems from a huge current account deficit to widespread corruption and layers upon layers of red tape, not to mention a creaking infrastructure that they haven't touched since the British left. But with a democracy, free press and an ever larger working population and growing middle class who will demand decent roads, water, sewerage, uninterrupted power supplies, the internet, etc. it seems there will be a large period of growth over the coming years.

I currently hold money in the Lyxor Nifty ETF which tracks the top 50 companies in India (well at least I think it does). It's been a slow burner for me and one I'm still happy to put money into. Especially after reading Edward Hugh's article.