In a move attract more foreign funds into the country, Finance Minister P Chidambaram said the government is considering measures to liberalize the foreign investment cap in various sectors. He said foreign investment cap for many sectors can be removed or certainly relaxed as these caps are completely irrelevant in terms of the changed situation.
In the FY14 Budget, Chidambaram had expressed the need to attract foreign funds to finance the rising current account deficit (CAD), which is the difference between the inflow and outflow of foreign currency. CAD was 4.6% of GDP in April-September 2012 and is estimated to be as high as 5% by the end of FY13.
Presently, there are various sectors where FDI limit is below 100 per cent. Earlier, in September last year, the government had liberalized foreign direct investment (FDI) norms in various sectors, including retail and aviation. While in multi-brand retail it is 51 per cent, in telecom and banking it is at 74 per cent. Further, in reconstruction companies, commodity exchanges, asset credit information companies and private security agencies, up to 49 per cent FDI is allowed.
The government has also approved hiking FDI limit in insurance and pension sector to 49 per cent, but the bill is pending for approval in Parliament. Besides this, the government has taken several steps to attract foreign funds in the country by liberalizing the external commercial borrowing (ECBs) norms. It is also planning to come up with accepted definition of FDI and portfolio investment where a foreign investor with more than 10 per cent stake would be treated as FDI.
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