Mumbai, Aug 2: The Unit Trust of India has collected Rs 440 crore net of repurchase in its flagship US-64 during the month of July, 2000. The units were sold at a special invitation price of Rs 13.50. The gross inflows into US-64 were of the order of Rs 500 crore during the month. The inflow would have been much larger in the scheme, but for the uncertainty in the equity market and the debt market during the last fortnight of the month, says a senior UTI official.However, he pointed out that retail investors have returned to the US-64 fold. The inflows into the scheme for July has come from 80,000 applications compared to only 46,000 applications during July 1999. During 1999-2000, the US-64 had seen a net inflow of Rs 2,387 crore.
Overall, the Trust has collected Rs 1000 crore during July from all the schemes. In the current financial year, UTI has set an overall collection target of Rs 20,000 crore against last year's collections of Rs 16,445 crore from all the schemes. UTI's fund inflows assume significance in the light of the uncertainty in the stock market. The markets have been starved of funds over the last couple of weeks. At least 50 to 60 per cent of the US-64 collections are expected to flow into the equity market. With a corpus of Rs 22,000 crore and two crore investors, US-64 invests about 68 to 70 per cent of its investible funds in equities.
UTI had hiked the dividend in US-64 marginally to 13.75 per cent from 13.50 per cent.
Over the last three months, the Trust has reshuffled its portfolio in US-64 bringing down its holding in Reliance Industries to about 11.32 per cent from over 14 per cent. The exposure of the scheme to the technology, media and telecom sector has also come down to around 20 per cent at the end of June 2000 from 26.5 per cent as on March 31, 2000.
Copyright © 2000 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.