FM to woo foreign investors starts second leg of tour to Europe

28 Jan 2013 Evaluate

With the second leg of overseas tour to Europe and London starting on January 28, Finance Minister P Chidambaram is expected to launch a new promotion campaign to woo European investors to India as the government struggles to reverse an economic slowdown and rein in fiscal deficit. The finance minister will attend a road-show on investment opportunities in India and will hold discussions with leading representatives of European companies and institutional investors.

This time it is widely expected that finance minister will showcase ‘infrastructure debt funds’ (IDFs), which are seen as an ideal vehicle for foreign investors looking for a piece of the India infrastructure play. Further, he also expected to bolster investor confidence in the world's fourth largest economy by outlining the measures taken by the Indian government in the past months to further liberalize foreign investments in various sectors.

Further, ahead of Chidambaram’s foreign tour, to provide a leg up to IDFs, capital market regulator SEBI amended its IDF-MF regulations to enable foreign institutional investors (FIIs) to be inducted as strategic investors in such funds. This move will help the finance minister invite FIIs to own a part of the IDFs that will come about in the country.

Since August last year, FIIs have already pumped in $16.7 billion in Indian equities, which is being viewed as FIIs reposing faith in the government’s policies and additional inflows are expected in the coming days. So far, FIIs have pumped in $3 billion in Indian markets in 2013. Last week, the finance minister had toured the Asian countries like Hong Kong and Singapore, will be visiting Frankfurt on the third leg of a four-nation tour to promote India as an attractive destination for foreign investments.

Despite the big mistake in the last budget like introduction of GAAR and retrospective amendments to bring indirect share transfers to tax had irked foreign investors, which led to the negative business sentiments, since August the market has responded with 22% jump in dollar terms due to the India’s favorable policy initiatives. Further, for the upcoming budget Chidambaram has assured that tax rates will not be hiked and the tax regime will be remain stable and fiscal deficit target for the current fiscal will be met, which is going to boost investor sentiments.

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