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Tuesday, May 17, 2011

Janus likes Colombia and West Africa

Countries show promise as emerging markets

Colombia, West Africa and Peru are the next markets to watch, Janus Capital Group portfolio manager John Eisinger said yesterday.

Eisinger, who looks after $5 billion in funds under management for Janus, said resource-rich Colombia was changing quickly.

"Obviously, 10 years ago it was a dangerous place, very politically unstable," he said.

"They have incredible natural resources, specifically around coal.

They have some offshore oil as well.

That country is looking interesting."

Two months ago, Standard & Poor's restored an investment-grade sovereign credit rating to Colombia for the first time in nearly 12 years.

Eisinger, who joined Denver-based Janus eight years ago, was in Australia to introduce the Janus Global Unconstrained Equity and Janus Opportunistic All Cap Growth funds to superannuation funds here.

"Offshore West Africa is a fascinating place for oil and gas exploration," he said.

Millions of years ago, the land masses of South America and West Africa were joined, so they shared the same richness of oil and gas deposits, he said.

Historically, political instability has discouraged investors from looking at West Africa, but the terrain is slowly changing.

"There are governments like Ghana that understand the need for foreign direct investment for advancing their economies," he said, adding contract law and other investment criteria there had improved.

However, the factors that boost foreign investors' confidence levels come at a price.

"You do have higher taxes [in Ghana], so the return on your investment is going to be lower than it might be in other places.

They're following the Norway model where they extract quite a lot of tax for oil and gas exploration."

He said Peru was also rich in resources, but new investment hinged on a 5 June presidential election victory by Keiko Fujimori, seen as friendlier to investors than her left-wing opponent, Ollanta Humala, who favoured economic intervention, which some fear could be a sugar-coated version of asset nationalisation.

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