India is negotiating bilateral investment treaties with different countries with a view to promote foreign inflows, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said on Thursday.
She said that foreign direct investment has doubled during 2014-23 to $596 billion compared to the inflow received during 2005-14.
"For encouraging sustained foreign investment, we are negotiating bilateral investment treaties with our foreign partners, in the spirit of 'first develop India'," she said while presenting the interim Budget 2024-25.
India is negotiating this treaty with countries such as the U.K.
These investment treaties help in promoting and protecting investments in each other's countries.
These pacts are important as India has earlier lost two international arbitration cases against British telecom giant Vodafone and Cairn Energy plc of the U.K. over the retrospective levy of taxes.
Foreign direct investment equity inflows in India declined 24% to $20.48 billion in April-September 2023, according to government data.
The total FDI — which includes equity inflows, reinvested earnings and other capital — contracted 15.5% to $32.9 billion during the period under review against $38.94 billion in April-June 2022.
The top investor countries include Singapore, Mauritius, the U.S., the U.K., and the UAE.
Computer software and hardware, trading, services, telecommunication, automobile, pharma and chemicals are some of the key sectors that attract FDI into India.
An official had earlier said that hardening interest rates globally and worsening geopolitical situation impacted FDI inflows into India in 2022-23.
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