Time to forge new bonds: Is corporate bond market at an inflection point?

Corporate bond issuance is looking impressive, but the market still has some distance to go before it can be considered deep

Last week T Rabi Sankar, deputy governor of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), highlighted the fact that the country’s outstanding stock of corporate bonds rose four-fold to Rs 40.20 trillion in FY22, from Rs 10.51 trillion a decade ago, and annual issuance is now closer to Rs 6 trillion, from Rs 3.80 trillion in FY12. Is the corporate bond market at an inflection point?
 

Nearly four years ago, the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) had said that large companies with ratings of “AA” and above should borrow 25 per cent of their funding needs through the bond