Raising the offshore bar for India’s high yield bond issuers

It appears to have shied away from issuing a debut offshore bond in its own name, but the Indian government has certainly made it a lot easier for the country’s high yield credits to access the international bond markets this year.

Liberalisation measures enacted by the Reserve Bank of India RBI in January and July have resulted in a seven-fold jump in issuance compared to 2018 according to Dealogic data see Table 1. But the $7.6 billion total is still very small relative to the size of India’s $2.67 trillion economy and China’s $57.4 billion dollar-denominated high yield issuance during 2019 again according to Dealogic data.