The Centre on Thursday cleared 14 Foreign Direct Investment proposals worth Rs 1,257 crore, including those of Mauritius-based Essar Telecom Holdings Ltd and US-based Goldman Sachs Asset Management.

The proposals include induction of foreign equity worth Rs 500 crore by Essar Telecom Holdings and Rs 200 crore from GSAM.

The investment proposals were cleared by Finance Minister P Chidambaram on the recommendations of the Foreign Investment Promotion Board.

The FDI proposals cleared by the government also included a Rs 480 crore plan by Greenko Mauritius to convert its operating company Balaji Biomass Power Pvt Ltd into an operating-cum-holding firm for making downstream investments in power projects.

The inflows from Essar Telecommunication Holdings, Mauritius will be used as 100 per cent foreign equity in a firm engaged in infrastructure for Internet Protocol.

The proposals are related to different areas of industry, including renewable energy, IT, telecom and bio-technology. The FIPB recommended that six proposals be deferred, which included that of the US-based Millennium India Acquisition Company Inc. The US firm wanted induction of equity into two non-banking finance companies with operations in stock broking and mutual fund distribution.