Mattias Martinsson, Founder and CIO of Tundra Fonder AB, a Swedish asset manager specialising in frontier markets stressed the need to follow environmental, social and ethical standards to make Sri Lanka funds more attractive to the global investors.
Martinsson expressed these views speaking at Tundra Fonder Sustainability Forum’, organized by the Colombo Stock Exchange (CSE) in collaboration with Tundra Fonder, in Colombo yesterday .
“Socially Responsible Investing (SRI) and Environmental Social and Governance (ESG) EGE will become the norm’’, Martinsson said adding that 37% of assets growth during 2012-2016 came from SRI assets and it grew by twice the rate of conventional assets during the same period. According to Martinsson, this growth will accelerate in the years ahead. Tundra Fonder, currently managing US $ 400 million worth of funds has expanded its presence in countries such as Vietnam, Pakistan and Sri Lanka.
Martinsson also noted that global wealth is shifting towards developing countries and Tundra sees tremendous opportunities in frontier markets for a long time to come.
Highlighting China’s major investment commitments in main frontier markets such as Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh, Martinsson stressed that Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and China have already gone through a major growth phase, and Sri Lanka now has the chance of becoming one of them.
Martinsson said Sri Lanka’s highly literate, hard working, growing workforce creates economic growth and ideal investment climate adding that the local tourism industry ,which has a good growth potential needs to come up with a proper plan especially to attract high-end tourists to better garner economic benefits.
Highlighting key challenges, confronted by Sri Lanka, Martinsson stressed that Sri Lanka has the highest exposure towards interest rate with a relatively high share of government debt. In addition, frontier markets growth is mainly hampered due to low liquidity and political risks.
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