Finance Ministry to organize road-shows in five Gulf nations to attract investment

29 May 2012 Evaluate

The finance ministry is planning to organize road-shows in five Gulf nations, together with Kuwait and the UAE from June 10-15, in a move to attract investments from foreign retail investors in equity and bond markets. The move comes on the back of considerable foreign capital outflows from the domestic equity market and lack of investors’ interest in the corporate bond market.

In order to increase foreign investments into corporate bonds, the ministry is also working on various measures, as Foreign Institutional Investors (FIIs) limits set for investment into these instruments was almost exhausted in the last fiscal. The FIIs can invest up to $20 billion in corporate bonds and $15 billion in government securities (G-secs). It is also projected that over the next 2 years QFIs would invest around $50-75 billion in the country's equity and bond markets.

Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee in the Union Budget 2012-13, had announced opening up of corporate bond market for QFIs. The government earlier on January 1, 2012, had permitted QFIs to directly invest in Indian equity market in order to widen the class of investors, attract more foreign funds, and reduce market volatility and to deepen the Indian capital market. Further, pursuant to the budget announcement 2011-12, QFIs have been already allowed to have direct access to Indian Mutual Funds schemes.

A Qualified Foreign Investors (OFIs) is an individual, group or association resident in a foreign country that is acquiescent with Financial Action Task Force (FATF) standards. QFIs do not include FIIs/sub-accounts. Permitting QFIs to directly invest in the Indian equity and bond markets would broaden the non-resident investor base in capital markets and increase the set of non-resident portfolio investors.

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