Abu Dhabi: Fund managers at the Bloomberg Markets Most Influential Summit on Wednesday collectively cited India as one of the largest growth markets in 2017 and over the next few years amid a shift away from developed — particularly European — markets.

Donald Amstad, director of Aberdeen Asset Management in Asia, said he expected to see growth in India’s bond and equity markets on the back of long-term policies initiated by Raghuram Rajan, former governor of the Reserve Bank of India.

“If we had to choose one country to invest in and hold [those investments] for 10 years, it would be India. It’s not so much what [Prime Minister Narendra] Modi is doing, but what Rajan did when he was the governor of the Reserve Bank,” Amstad said.

He particularly highlighted Rajan’s inflation-targeting policies, which made him India’s first governor to introduce such measures.

“The most significant change in what Rajan has introduced is that now we’re seeing this extraordinary rally in the bond market in India. Since November 9, you’ve seen bond yields in India come down by 60 basis points whereas they’ve gone up by 60 basis points in the United States, and we think that will continue. And as the term structure interest rates come down in India, it’s not only good for holders of long-term bonds, it’s terrific news for the equity markets as well, and really, anything that Modi does on top — and he’s doing a tremendous amount — is icing on top of the cake that was essentially baked by Rajan. Tremendous future for this country,” Amstad said.

Other experts agreed with that view, including Jean-Paul Villain, director of the Strategy Unit at the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority (Adia), the emirate’s sovereign wealth fund.

“If we look at where economic growth will come in the next 10-15 years, it is clear that it will come [at a] global level from countries that are large domestically like the US, India, and China,” Villain said at the Bloomberg Summit in Abu Dhabi.

Discussing investment strategies, he also highlighted fixed income as a good asset class to invest in considering volatility in equity and bond markets.

In late October, Adia announced the opening of an office in Hong Kong to identify opportunities in China and other key Asian markets. This came after it said — in its annual review released in late July — that China and India were “better placed to grow in the years ahead” given that they are commodity consumers rather than commodity suppliers.