India is one of the worst places to do business: Jim Rogers

Commodities bull Jim Rogers thinks India is the best country in the world to visit as a tourist but one of the worst to do business.

In a n interview with The Economic Times, he said that doing business in India was a “bureaucratic nightmare” and that it could become an exciting market only if the government got its act together.

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He said he himself would turn bullish on India if the government decided to open ’everything’ - economy, currency, commodity and stock markets. In general, he was highly critical of the Indian government, saying that it “just keeps spending other people’s money”.

Well, that’s something a lot of other governments will be doing as well this year - if they aren’t already. Several governments around the world are facing elections this year and in their attempts to woo voters, they might be inclined to turn on the money taps.

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“…you are going to see a lot of government spending as governments try to buy elections. A lot of people are going to have a very good 2012 because government is going to pour money into their pockets and their friends and they are going to have a good time,” he told the newspaper.

In terms of investment bets, he said he owned silver and gold, although he added that he wasn’t planning on adding to his portfolio. He also said he owned US dollars. He was also bullish on crude oil prices.

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Asked about China’s economic prospects, Rogers thought that that some parts of the economy could face a hard landing (a sharp and sudden reversal in growth) in the near future. “But that is not the end of the Chinese economy,” he told the newspaper. “The economy is not like the one in America and the UK when essentially it was wrapped up in real estate and real estate speculation. The Chinese economy is much broader than that.”

For the entire ET interview, click here.