Union Cabinet to soon take a call on FIPB abolition
According to commerce minister Nirmala Sitharaman, a decision has been made for the winding up of Foreign Investment Promotion Board (FIPB)
New Delhi: The Union cabinet will soon take a call on the winding up of the 25-year-old Foreign Investment Promotion Board (FIPB), commerce and industry minister Nirmala Sitharaman said on Saturday.
“A decision has been made for closure of FIPB. Necessary arrangements will have to be made on which discussions have happened among several ministries... The cabinet has to take a call on it," she told reporters here.
Finance minister Arun Jaitley in his Budget for 2017-18 had proposed scrapping of FIPB — an inter-ministerial body under the finance ministry’s department of economic affairs that processes foreign direct investment (FDI) proposals and makes recommendations for government approval. The government is yet to announce the modalities of the new system of processing applications which fall under the approval route.
The FIPB was initially constituted under the prime minister’s office in the wake of economic liberalisation in the early 1990s. Sectors that are under the approval route for FDI include defence and retail trading. As per the proposed mechanism, respective ministries would take care of the FDI proposals.
Asked about more liberalisation in the FDI policy, Sitharaman said the government has brought in a number of big-ticket reforms and the “process will continue". “We will have a lot more discussions on easing up (FDI norms)," she said.
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