Compulsion---Important meeting on FDI in defence, other issues tomorrow
Commerce and Industry Minister
Anand Sharma is expected to
discuss hiking of FDI cap in the
defence sector as well as
other issues related to foreign
direct investment with
Finance Minister P Chidambaram
tomorrow.
"A meeting has been scheduled between
both the ministers
for tomorrow. The Commerce
and Industry Minister may discuss
the issue of increasing FDI
ceiling in defence and on
redefining FDI and FII,"
according to an official source.
Sharma is pitching for hiking FDI
cap in defence to 49
per cent from the current 26
per cent.
India is one of the largest
defence importers in the
world with a minuscule
component of exports. India
at present
imports over USD 8 billion
worth of such equipment and its
defence budget is growing at
an average of 13.4 per cent
annually since 2006-07.
According
to sources, Sharma is also likely to discuss
matters related to redefining FDI
and foreign institutional
investment (FII) to remove
ambiguities.
On this,
the Reserve Bank is expected to soon come out
with a discussion paper.
Chidambaram,
in his Budget speech, had proposed to follow
the international practice with
regard to defining FDI and
FII. According to the proposed
definition, if an investor has
a stake of 10 per cent or less in a
company, the investment
would be treated as FII. And if an
investor has a stake of
more than 10 per cent, it would be
treated as FDI.
No comments:
Post a Comment