Indian investment promotion agency, Invest India, receives UN award

Invest India, country’s national investment promotion and facilitation agency won the UN award for excellence in promoting excellence for sustainable development. The award was presented at World Investment Forum (WIF) which is organized by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD). Deepak Bagla, the CEO of Invest India, was presented with award by Armenian President Armen Sarkissian at WIF, Geneva. The other countries which bagged top awards at the function include Bahrain, Lesotho and South Africa. The event was attended by 6,000 participants, including more than 10 heads of state, and ministers from 50 countries.  “A proud day for us! Invest India awarded as winner of the 2018 United Nations Award for excellence in promoting investments in sustainable development at the World Investment Forum Geneva,” tweeted Invest India.

Invest India was set up by the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion of Ministry of Commerce and Industry to facilitate and promote investment in various areas. It is a non-profit agency and focuses on sector-specific, state specific investor targeting and development of new partnerships to enable investments in the country. “Invest India received the award for excellence in servicing and supporting a major global wind turbines company in the establishment of a blade manufacturing plant in India while committing to train local staff and produce 1 gigawatt of renewable energy,” read the statement by UNCTAD. The award by UNCATD is presented to honor investment promotion agencies (IPAs) which follow best practices to receive investment in areas related to meet Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Under the Make in India program, FDI policy was liberalized with 100% Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) being permitted in all 25 sectors, except for space (74%), defense (49%) and news media (26%). As a result, India emerged as the top destination globally in 2015 for foreign direct investment (FDI), surpassing USA and China, with $60.1 billion FDI. FDI is the way foreign national/Firms can own a part of a business or a business in its entirety, outside their jurisdiction. FDI helps in technology transfer. In other words, FDI gives a chance to the beneficiary country to taste global practices and global efficiency.  FDI is the best form of investment a country can seek from foreign companies/nationals. Currently, India needs investments of about 4% of GDP in the form of FDIs. But, we are not receiving enough to spur the growth rate to a double-digit figure. If we compare ourselves with our peers, in the last 10-12 years, Mexico has received over $250 billion, China has received over $2 trillion investments in the form of FDI while we are still stuck at around $250 billion.

If one compares the relationship between FDI growth rate with that of GDP, one would come up with the conclusion that, Every 1% increase in FDI results in about 0.4-0.5% increase in GDP, though it depends on country’s development stage heavily. So, the importance of FDIs in a developing nation can’t be stressed enough. To increase the GDP growth rate by 2%, we need to have about $112 billion as FDI for India whose GDP currently stands at $2.6 trillion. We have only received $60.1 billion as FDI in FY 2016-17. Previous regimes have been conservative of FDI but Modi government embraced FDI and liberalized many sectors to increase the investment. The setting up of an agency like ‘Invest India’, dedicated only for facilitation and promotion of FDI will certainly help in national economic growth.