Prithvi Haldea of Prime said the assembly elections were only a minor reason for the absence of public issues. ``The market has been suffering for long from several grave ills. These include the heavy losses in primary issues and lack of exemplary action against past offending issuers leading to a loss of investors' faith. Unrealistic entry barriers, compounded by a slowdown in the industrial activity, have only further worsened the situation.'' It is now for the 17th month in running that the primary market has witnessed an extremely low level of activity in terms of public issues, with only 45 such issues between July, 1997 and November, 1998. While November, 1998 had no issue and October saw a single issue, the earliermonthly figures have all been very low.

In the current fiscal, between April and November, only 19 public issues have hit the market. In terms of amount, almost the entire mobilisation has taken place through the four debt issues from ICICI (Rs 1771 crore) and one from IDBI (Rs 1342 crore). These together, at Rs 3113 crore, have constituted 90 per cent of the period's total mobilisation of Rs 3445 crore. Additionally, banks have mobilised Rs 216 crore, though through equity.Financial institutions and banks have together raised Rs 3329 crore, constituting 97 per cent of the period's total amount, significantly up from a meagre four per cent in 1994-95.

However, the most disturbing factor, according to Haldea, was the languishing equity mobilisation by the private manufacturing sector, with a raising of only Rs 111 crore through just eight public issues in the first eight months. This represents a major drop over the last three years, from a high of Rs 11005 crore in full 1994-95. Even most of this amountof Rs 111 crore has not come from the investing public, as per Prime. Poor sentiment and scepticism, compounded by consistent poor quality of issues which abound despite `stringent' entry barriers, have seen the investors reject all of these eight offerings.

Additionally, two NBFC issues, aggregating Rs 5 crore, which entered the market, were also only `technical' issues.

For the third year in a row, equity mobilisation on the whole, including those by banks and NBFCs in addition to the manufacturing sector, has suffered, adversely affecting the industrial activity. Such public issues have raised only Rs 332 crore in the eight month period as against the amount of Rs 2588 crore and Rs 734 crore, respectively in corresponding periods of 1996 and 1997. The high point was 1994-95 when Rs 13,312 crore was raised through equity.

The number of initial public offerings (IPOs) had already fallen from a high of 1350 in 1995-96 to 716 in 1996-97 and to only 51 in 1997-98. These are now down to a meagre 11 in thefirst eight months of fiscal 1998-99.

The balance period of 1998-99 may also be equally disappointing. There are hardly any revival signs emanating from the market. As of now, December will yet again witness bonds issues from ICICI and IDBI and two small equity offerings from Sonata Software and Shri MM Softek are the only other issues. Further mobilisation of debt are expected from ICICI, IDBI and IFCI in the remaining months. Worse, the disinvestment by PSUs in favour of small investors is still on the horizon.