NEW DELHI: Despite the Covid-induced lockdown, the foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows for the first eight months of this financial year, i.e. the April-November 2020 period stood at $58.37 billion, up by 22 per cent over the previous year.
According to the data released by the Ministry of Commerce and Industry, total FDI equity inflows in April-November 2020 was $43.85 billion, up by robust 37 per cent on a year on year basis.
“The intent all this while has been to make the FDI policy more investor-friendly and remove the policy bottlenecks that have been hindering the investment inflows into the country. The steps taken in this direction have borne fruit, as is evident from the ever-increasing volumes of FDI inflows being received into the country,” the commerce ministry statement said.
Earlier, the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) had said that while the FDI flows “declined most strongly” in major economies such as the UK, the US and Russia.
According to UNCTAD, global FDI collapsed in 2020 by 42 per cent to an estimated $859 billion from $1.5 trillion in 2019.However both India and China bucked the trend. While China was the world’s largest FDI recipient with flows rising by 4 per cent to $163 billion, FDI inflow in India rose by 13 per cent in 2020.
“FDI is an important source of non-debt finance for the economic development of India. It has been the endeavour of the government to put in place an enabling and investor-friendly FDI policy,” said a
commerce ministry release.