New Delhi, June 20 (IANS) The driving force behind the government's latest liberalisation of foreign direct investment norms is its hope that FDI inflow would spur job creation as well as more defence production, a senior official said on Monday.
"With this liberalisation, we expect manufacturing activity to come in, more activity in defence products. The driving force behind the whole thing is that all this investment should facilitate creation of jobs," Economic Affairs Secretary Shaktikanta Das told reporters here following the announcment of major reforms in India's foreign equity norms, notably in aviation, pharmaceuticals and food processing sectors, further opening the doors for the inflow of enhanced overseas capital.
"The decision on FDI liberalisation today (Monday) is a follow-up to the decisions which were taken last November when a whole lot of reforms were announced," Das said.
He said that under the amended norms, wherever approval is given by the regulator, the companies will not need to approach the Foreign Investment Promotion Board (FIPB) for clearance.
"The idea is to go for process simplification and make everything process-driven. Now today's decisions are also a continuation of the same approach that wherever there are regulators, there is no need for dual clearance by FIPB," he said.
The whole approach is to make the process of FDI approval "as far as possible automatic", he added.
About the civil aviation sector, Das said the amended policy would "definitely assist the domestic aviation companies to strengthen themselves, to expand their network and also in the process create jobs for our youth".
He also said there would be "no pressure" on anybody to bring in FDI.
"It is not compulsory on domestic aviation companies to bring FDI. If they need, they will get it and they will be able to increase there capability," the secretary said.
