Indian stocks best performers globally

A sharp meltdown during the last year notwithstanding, Indian stock market has emerged as the best performer among its global peers for a time-frame of five years with a return of over 65 per cent for investors, according to Economic Survey.    

In the five-year period ending December 2008, the Indian stock market benchmark Sensex posted a positive return of 65.2 per cent, the Survey showed, even as a number of global markets such as Japan, Malaysia and Taiwan, posted negative returns.

The second best five-year return of 43.7 per cent was given by China, followed by 35.5 per cent in Indonesia and 25.6 per cent in South Korea, the pre-budget survey (2008-09) said.     

This is the first time that the Indian stock market has posted a better return than any other markets from 2003-end levels. Even at the end of 2007, when Indian markets gave a record high return of 247.4 per cent over 2003-end level, it was lower than 296.8 per cent return in Indonesia.     

In 2006 as well, the returns given by the country's benchmark index Sensex of 136.1 per cent was second to Indonesia's 161 per cent, the data compiled by the survey showed. In 2005, Indian stocks were behind South Korea (69.7 per cent) and Indonesia (68.1 per cent).     

"The cumulative change in global indices at end-December 2008 over end-2003 level is in sharp contrast to the earlier years," the economic survey tabled today in Parliament stated.