During November, FDI flows into China, the largest recipient of foreign investment through this route, fell for the 10th time in 11 months, as labour costs rose and an economic slowdown dragged growth down for seven quarters in a row.
The FIPB, headed by Department of Economic Affairs Secretary Arvind Mayaram, discussed 30 foreign direct investment proposals, including 10 from pharma sector.
In 2011-12, 2010-11 and 2009-10, the sector attracted FDI worth $1.99 billion, $1.66 billion and $2.55 billion respectively.
Telecom Secretary R Chandrashekhar on Thursday said 100 per cent foreign direct investment (FDI) in telecom would not be possible before the 2G auction.
The Railway Minister has announced that there is an urgency to attract FDI in Railway projects.
Chaturvedi said the highest ever FDI flows received by the country were in FY12 at $35.12 billion while in four months of this fiscal alone we have crossed $10.75 billion.
Opposing FDI in the retail sector, activist Anna Hazare on Wednesday said the move would lead to enslavement of the countrymen and will not benefit the farmers as claimed by the government.
Breaking his silence on FDI in multi-brand retail, Dravida Munnetra Kazagham chief M Karunanidhi on Monday said his party will not support the Centre's decision to allow foreign investment in the sector.
The Finance Ministry further said decision on seven FDI proposals has been deferred.
The highest FDI came in services ($2.18 billion), followed by automobiles ($1.28 billion), pharmaceuticals ($1.27 billion) and construction development ($1.05 billion) in the 11 months of 2013-14.
A leading economic think-tank on Thursday advocated allowing foreign direct investment of upto 49 per cent in the retail sector.
Between 2004-05 and 2007-08, FDI in services leapfrogged to $6.61 billion from $444 million, an official statement said. The real estate sector which was thrown open in 2004-05 saw the FDI picking up slowly in the initial two years, but grew substantially in 2007-08 to $2.17 billion.
Foreign direct investment inflows to India increased by 67.6 per cent year-on-year to $2.38 billion in the first six months of the current fiscal ended September 30.
Sources said in order to address the security concerns, FDI proposals from Pakistan would be routed through the Foreign Investment Promotion Board.
The department of telecom will issue guidelines on raising the foreign direct investment limit to 74 per cent from 49 per cent next week.
The Congress on Saturday saw "no crisis" over the opposition of it allies like Trinamool Congress to the FDI in retail and said that the party was fully behind Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on the issue.
Gadkari said, infrastructure sector including highways, airports, inland waterways, railways, logistic parks, broad gauge and metro, apart from MSMEs can attract large scale foreign investment.
The government must review its policy to allow foreign direct investment up to 24 per cent in the small and medium scale enterprises, and ensuring better credit facility and technology financing to make them globally competitive.
Even as the Centre is working overtime to roll out FDI in retail while the real decision might rest with the states, Arvind Singhal, chairman, Technopak Advisors, often referred to as the poster boy of the Indian retail sector, said the so-called big-ticket measure was "not the most important thing"for the sector.
The move comes in the backdrop of a slowdown in the foreign direct investments and its impact on the current account deficit.
Inter-ministerial body Telecom Commission on Tuesday approved hiking foreign direct investment limit in the sector from 74 per cent to 100 per cent.
Emerging consensus is that all state capitals be covered.
The latest available data from the Reserve Bank of India show a 77 per cent jump in the FDI in the first half of the current financial year (April-September), compared to what was $19.5 billion the same period a year ago.
India is now a biz friendly nations, say Arun Jaitley.
Prominent e-commerce marketplace players include Amazon.in, Flipkart, Snapdeal, Paytm, Shopclues and Jabong
The move came as the country badly needs capital inflows as the rupee comes under pressure
Abu Dhabi's International Holding Company, one of the first high-profile investors in billionaire Gautam Adani's conglomerate, has decided to sell its stake in two Adani companies. In a disclosure, IHC said it has "entered into a definitive agreement with a buyer to dispose of its FDI investment in Adani Green Energy Ltd and Adani Transmission Ltd". It, however, did not name the buyer.
Taking its protest against FDI to the streets, opposition parties on Wednesday said their fight will go on till they ensure that it is scrapped altogether.
The Union government is likely to come out with a liberalised foreign direct investment policy in a bid to make foreign investment an engine of growth and create large-scale employment.
Tesco, which has a franchise agreement with Trent Hypermarkets for the latter's back-end operations, is believed to be interested in investing in those hypermarkets
Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) as a source of funding has shrunk to a trickle for the once lucrative telecom sector with foreign investment inflows plunging to $43 million in the April-September period of the current fiscal.
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The new Insurance Bill may be implemented in 2015.
Bharti Group said on Thursday that it will not dilute its share in its telecom arm Bharti Televentures even if the government raises the foreign direct investment limit in the sector.
Punjab and Gujarat are in favour of FDI in multi-brand retail in food items while many others have vehemently opposed the idea, a government official said.
Some new sectors in which the commerce ministry has proposed to allow foreign direct investment (FDI) are credit information companies and commodity exchanges. The ministry is in favour of allowing up to 49 per cent FDI proposed in both these sectors. In proposing to open up the commodity sector, the ministry has said that FII investment be limited to 24 per cent, with a condition that a foreign investor cannot hold more than 10 per cent equity in the investing companies
Consensus eluded an all-party meeting called on FDI issue on Monday even as Samajwadi Party and Bahujan Samaj Party provided comfort to the government by not insisting on voting and Trinamool Congress springing a surprise by speaking in a similar tone.
In the cacophony of debates on the wisdom of liberalising retail foreign direct investment, or FDI, one viewpoint was noticeably absent: whether and how this might affect India's strategic interests.
Bharatiya Janata Party, Communist Party of India and Janata Dal-United on Tuesday come together to launch a national campaign against FDI in retail and sought support from the people to make the movement against the government's "anti-people" policy a success.
