by Harish Gupta, National Editor, Lokmat Group
New Delhi, Sep 19
Indo-China relations may have soured after the Ladakh stand-off. But the FDI inflow from Chinese companies has been falling at a rapid pace to India for the past three years. Even Indian companies have been keeping away from China.
This was revealed in the FDI inflow figures saying if $350 million was invested in India by the Chinese companies in 2017-18, it came down to $229 million next year and further fell to a record low of $ 163.77 during 2019-20.
It is not as if only FDI inflow has been falling regularly. The Indian companies have been investing less and less in China for the past three-four years. If Indian companies invested $49.19 million in 2017, it came down to just $12.61 million next year and rising slightly to $27.57 million during 2019.
When the Minister asked in the Lok Sabha if the Government has any proposal to not accord any permission to any Chinese firms to invest in India, he emphatically denied “No.”
Piyush Goyal, Minister for Commerce, Industry and Railways informed the Parliament separately that India’s trade deficit with China came down to $5.8 billion in the April-June 2020-21 period from $13.1 billion in the same period of the last financial year. Even the total trade between the two nations also slipped to $16.55 billion in Q1 FY21 from $21.42 billion in the April-June period of 2019-20.
Interestingly, when asked if trade barriers have been imposed against China to ward off trade deficit, Goyal said at present, about 550 products) are under the restricted/prohibited category for imports under the Foreign Trade Policy not only from China but from all countries. Obviously, the ban was not China specific.
