About 120-130 foreign direct investment (FDI) proposals worth around Rs 12,000-13,000 crore ($1.6-1.8 billion) from China are pending with the government for clearance, a source told FE. This follows India’s stipulation in April that FDI proposals from bordering nations must obtain government approval.
Interestingly, these pending proposals in less than nine months are equivalent of more than a half of the total FDI inflows from China ($2.4 billion) in 20 years through March 2020. FDI from China was merely 0.5% of total FDI inflows into India over the past two decades. Unsurprisngly, most of the current pending proposals are for brownfield projects.
This, in a sense, confirmed what the government had feared when it tightened the FDI norms in April—“opportunistic acquisitions” by the cash-rich Chinese of domestic firms that saw a massive crash in valuations after the Covid-19 pandemic….