New Govt To Outline Fipb Role, Says Industry Secy

Industry secretary T R Prasad, who is also the chairman of the Foreign Investment Promotion Board (FIPB), yesterday said that the exact role of the FIPB would be decided only by the next government.

He was responding to the recent statements related to the winding up of the FIPB on the sidelines of a seminar organised by the Indo-German Chamber of Commerce here yesterday.

Whether the FIPB would be wound up or whether it will play a minimalist role will depend on the next government.

Our approach is to come out with transparent policies so that more cases could be directly cleared by the Reserve Bank of India, he said adding that the FIPB or a similar core group will eventually give directions to the RBI.

 

He also said that the secretary of small scale industries was considering a list comprising many products currently reserved for the domestic small scale industry, to see whether the list could be pruned.

Prasad also threw light on the rationale behind the governments new auto policy while responding to objections raised by Mercedes Benz India Ltd chief executive Till Becker de Freitas question on the logic of mandatory indigenisation, even while export obligations are required to achieve forex neutrality.

Prasad said that export obligations are needed not only to balance foreign exchange outflow on account of CKD imports, but also to ensure that foreign companies are forced to bring in latest car models and technology into the country.

We have imposed this export criteria so that each company would be forced to bring in the latest technology to make exports from India globally viable, he said.

However, indigenisation norms have been imposed to achieve another objective that of bringing in technology to domestic ancillary industry so that there is a feel-good factor in the domestic sector. Without this, nobody will welcome foreign investment in this sector, he added.