The government after liberalizing FDI norms in sectors like insurance and defence to attract investments is now considering a proposal for increasing FDI limit in the media sector, from the current 26 per cent. A proposal regarding this was recently discussed in the Information and Broadcasting Ministry.
Last year, the then Union Information and Broadcasting Minister Prakash Javadekar had said that the ministry is seeking inputs from various stakeholders on whether to allow 100 per cent FDI in news media. It has been reported that an inter-ministerial panel is now discussing the issue and the government may look at hiking the cap to 49 per cent.
FDI is allowed only up to 26 per cent in publishing of newspapers and periodicals dealing with news and current affairs through government approval route. As per data released by Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP), the foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows in the information and broadcasting (I&B) sector (including print media) in the period April 2000 – January 2015 stood at $ 3,890.94 million.