The unit capital of open-end equity funds (both balanced and growth) has declined by around Rs 450 crore in 1997-98. Only four funds have witnessed positive inflows during the year. Reliance Vision tops with an increase of Rs 11.41 crore during the year.

In fact, during March-September, 1997 the unit capital peaked from Rs 45.50 crore to Rs 62.39 crore before settling to Rs 56.92 crore in March, 1998.

Magnum Open-end has seen its unit capital jump from Rs 45.92 crore to Rs 57.77 core. This follows a 1:10 bonus issue in November 1997 and related marketing exercise. Other funds to witness positive inflows are Bluechip with Rs 0.88 crore and Templeton IGF with Rs 6.11 crore. Interestingly, among these schemes, only Bluechip has been among the top performers during the year.

Highest outflow from Mastergain '92

MasterGain '92 for the period December, 1996-97 has witnessed the largest outflow of Rs 318 crore. Canganga (Rs 35.76crore), Prima (Rs 14.93 crore), Prima Plus (Rs 14.26 crore) and Alliance '95 (Rs 12.83 crore) are the other funds to witness AN outflow.

Meanwhile, according to AMFI, mutual funds IPO's collected Rs 10,042 crore in 1997-98. This includes Rs 8696 crore by UTI, Rs 332 crore collected by public sector funds and Rs 1041 crore by private sector funds. AMFI has not disclosed the redemption figures.

Liquid fund from Templeton

Templeton Mutual fund has launched its short term money market fund on June 17, 1997. The fund seeks to provide income and high liquidity. Normally the fund will have a 50-100 per cent exposure in money market and balance in debt. The latest (June 24) NAV of the scheme is Rs 10.0125.

Presently, short-term debt funds are are from Birla, Kothari, Alliance, Reliance and JM mutual funds, besides the three money market funds available in this segment. TILF will offer investors in Mumbai and Delhi the benefit of redemption on the same day through a cheque.

Investors in other citieswill have their redemption requests processed within two days of the receipt of redemption requests. The minimum subscription amount is Rs 25,000, additional purchases of units can be made for a minimum of Rs 5,000 or any amount thereafter. The minimum amount for redemption is Rs 5000 and the redemption will be done at the NAV applicable for the day.

Sun F&C to launch debt fundSun F&C plans to launch its open end debt scheme. The Money Value Fund will be available in two flavours- the liquid option and the debt option. The bond option in turn will have two plans, income and growth.

The liquid option is targeted at attracting short term investment which will be predominately invested in money market while the debt option go in long- term fixed income securities. This will be the 22nd open end income fund to be launched during the past few years.

The Money Value Fund is an innovative product by Sun F&C since the AMC has bifurcated the debt segment by launching a single fund. The ternd for launchinga short-term liquid fund has caught the fancy of AMCs in the last one year with Birla AMC being the first to veer around the 30-day (now 15-day) lock-in in MMMFs. A number of asset management companies like Birla, Reliance, JM, Templeton and Alliance had to launch a separate liquid fund since they were already managing a debt fund.

Meanwhile, UTI has collected around Rs 140 crore during the initial offer period for its maiden open-end debt fund.

SBI Mutual fund plans to launch its second assured return monthly scheme for the calendar year. MMIS '98 (II) will be launched in July. Although the assured income rate has not been decided, it is likely to be higher than what was offered to the MMIS '98 investors. MMIS '98 had offered 12.5 percent for the monthly plan, Rs 12.64 for the quarterly plan and 13.24 for the annual plan.