India Changes Foreign Investment Rules to Boost Growth

India has eased key rules on foreign direct investment in multi-brand retail in an attempt to attract foreign firms as it looks to boost economic growth.

Rules governing sourcing of products, infrastructure investment and selection of cities have been relaxed.

India had opened up multi-brand retail to foreign investors last year, but no foreign supermarket chain has yet entered the country.

The move also triggered a series of protests in India.

The previous rules made it mandatory for foreign supermarkets to source 30% of their products from small Indian firms.

The government has retained that requirement, but said foreign firms will be given five years in which to reach that target, giving them the option of importing goods from overseas initially.

Global chains will also have to put 50% of their initial investment in to building back-end infrastructure such as cold storage facilities.

via BBC

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Alfonso Esparza

Alfonso Esparza

Senior Currency Analyst at Market Pulse
Alfonso Esparza specializes in macro forex strategies for North American and major currency pairs. Upon joining OANDA in 2007, Alfonso Esparza established the MarketPulseFX blog and he has since written extensively about central banks and global economic and political trends. Alfonso has also worked as a professional currency trader focused on North America and emerging markets. He has been published by The MarketWatch, Reuters, the Wall Street Journal and The Globe and Mail, and he also appears regularly as a guest commentator on networks including Bloomberg and BNN. He holds a finance degree from the Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Education (ITESM) and an MBA with a specialization on financial engineering and marketing from the University of Toronto.
Alfonso Esparza