India has the largest number of listed companies in the world -- 8800 -- and in 1995, the market capitalisation in India was 39.8 per cent of the GDP, which is higher than that of Germany, France and China.

However, this must be viewed with some degree of caution. For one, when compared with USA, UK and Japan, our market capitalisation is too small, considering that they have lesser number of listed companies. This also means that a number of listed Indian companies are too small by world standards. Secondly, turnover statistics reveal that the Indian market is quite illiquid by the standards of the developed countries. But the capital sector reforms initiated in 1992 are said to be taking care of that factor to an extent.