India in talks with JP Morgan to join bond taxes

Finance Minister P Chidambaram and other officials plan to meet next week in the United States with big fund managers that track such indexes including Pimco, Capital International and Standard Life, one of the sources with direct knowledge of the matter said.

To qualify for entry into the widely-followed JPMorgan Government Bond Index - Emerging Markets, India needs to ease rules on registration, documentation, due diligence rules for the entry of foreign institutional investors (FIIs) in the Indian debt market, besides allowing them to invest more in the govt debt, two sources said. The sources declined to be identified because of the sensitivity of the matter.

A finance ministry spokesman declined to comment.

With a wide current account gap and a weakened rupee , India wants to attract some of the billions of dollars managed passively by tracking global indexes. However, Indian restrictions limit foreign investment in onshore debt, which exclude it from indexes managed by JP Morgan and others.

India has been taking steps to ease investment rules but is also skittish about fully removing limits given worries about the volatility of global flows. Its credit rating also stands just one notch above junk status, although a downgrade would not disqualify it from an emerging market index.

Inclusion in popular government bond indexes could attract $20 billion-$40 billion in additional flows into India over a year, Standard Chartered Bank wrote in a report last month.