The government is looking at further relaxing the foreign direct investment policy after recent reforms that allowed automatic approval for most sectors and increased the limit in many areas. India has become one of the most open economies in the world and 92% of its FDI now comes through the automatic route, Department of Industrial Policy & Promotion (DIPP) secretary Ramesh Abhishek said at the ‘India Means Business’ session of the India Economic Summit. “We have allowed 100% FDI even in very sensitive sectors and under automatic route in most cases.
There is a huge potential in India to attract FDI.” Reforms are ongoing and based on industry feedback, the government will take steps to ease processes, Abhishek said, indicating further relaxation in the foreign investment regime. “We have taken a series of transformative steps in the last two years...from bankruptcy code to GST, which the government is ready to launch as per schedule,” Abhishek said. The target date to implement GST is April 1.