Foreigners to get direct access to the Indian equity markets

02 Jan 2012 Evaluate

Worried about the exodus of the foreign funds from the Indian markets, the government has taken a bold step allowing foreign individual investors, pension funds and trusts to directly invest in Indian equities. Under the new scheme, investors called ‘Qualified Foreign Investors' (QFIs) like foreign individual,  foreign pension fund or even a foreign trust will be able to invest directly in the Indian equity market. The new scheme is expected to be operational from January 15. The QFIs will have a separate ceiling from FIIs and non-resident Indians (NRIs). A QFI can hold up to 5 per cent of paid-up equity of a company and all QFIs put together cannot hold more than 10 per cent in a company.

A finance ministry statement said that ‘this has been done in order to widen the class of investors, attract more foreign funds, reduce market volatility and deepen the Indian capital market.’

However, investment is restricted to QFIs from countries that are compliant with the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) recommendations and are signatories to the international body of securities market, IOSCO's, memorandum of understanding.

According to the SEBI’s data, net outflows exceeded $450 million last year, FIIs pulled out money on account of growth falling below 7% and widely-publicized difficulties in obtaining regulatory clearances. With the new scheme investors from over 80 countries can access the Indian equity market, barring Pakistan and few other countries.

The foreign investors are already allowed direct access to Indian mutual fund schemes so it’s a step further in the same direction. The measures are intended to widen the investor class, attract more foreign funds, reduce market volatility and deepen the Indian capital market.

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