347 FDI proposals received from countries sharing land border with India; 66 approved

As many as 347 foreign direct investment (FDI) proposals, worth about Rs 75,951 crore, have been received by the government from countries sharing land border with India since April 18, 2020, Parliament was informed on Wednesday.

Out of 347, 66 proposals have so far been granted approval by the government and 193 cases have been rejected or closed or withdrawn, Minister of State for Commerce and Industry Som Parkash said in a written reply to the Lok Sabha.

"Since 18th April, 2020, 347 FDI proposals have been received by the government from countries sharing land border with India or where the beneficial owner of an investment into India is situated in or is a citizen of any such country...The value of investments proposed in the aforementioned proposals received by the government is approximately Rs 75,951 crore," he said.

In April 2020, the government had made its prior approval mandatory for foreign investments from countries that share land border with India to curb opportunistic takeovers of domestic firms following the COVID-19 pandemic.

Countries which share land border with India are China, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Bhutan, Nepal, Myanmar and Afghanistan. As per that decision, FDI proposals from these countries need government approval for investments in India in any sector.

The 66 approved proposals are from sectors including automobile (7), chemicals (5), computer software and hardware (3), pharma (4), education (1), electronics (8), food processing (2), information and broadcasting (1), machine tools (1), petroleum and natural gas (1), power (1), services sector (11).

The total value of investments of these 66 proposals aggregated to Rs 13,624.88 crore.

In another reply, Parkash said a decision has been taken to develop a platform for data exchange among all modes of operators.

Accordingly, Unified Logistics Interface Platform (ULIP) has been designed by National Industrial Corridor Development Corporation Ltd (NICDC), under the guidance of NITI Aayog.

"So far, the platform has been integrated with 24 systems of six ministries including Ministry of Ports, Shipping and Waterways, Ministry of Railways, Ministry of Road Transport and Highways, Ministry of Civil Aviation, Directorate General Foreign Trade and Central Board of Indirect Taxes (CBIC) through 78 application programming interface (APIs)," he added.

National Highways Logistics Management Ltd (NHLML), a wholly-owned subsidiary of NHAI, has already invited bids for development of Nagpur, Chennai and Bangalore multi-modal logistics parks (MMLP) and initiated the feasibility study for MMLP at Indore.