The Central Government, on Thursday, appealed to India Inc. to shun pessimism and drive away the negative sentiments as India is not the only country suffering from economic contraction.
Addressing a national conference on ‘Qualified foreign investors: challenges and opportunities’ organised by Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India (Assocham) here, Department of Economic Affairs Joint Secretary (Capital markets) Thomas Mathew said: “Don’t look at India in isolation but in comparative terms with other economies of the world as taking all the factors in the perspective, we are doing better than the global economy”.
Stressing that there was “no point wallowing in self-pity” and there was a need to look at the Indian economy in “a positive way as the world makes India look good,” Dr. Mathew pointed out that even the major sovereign credit rating agencies “have either reaffirmed or upgraded India’s economic outlook.”
Challenges
About the challenges being faced by Qualified Foreign Investors (QFIs), Dr. Mathew claimed that all the major stumbling blocks had been removed and “today each QFI can open an individual rupee account and there is no requirement for any other account as it links to both the demat and the transaction account and the QFIs can retain the money in their rupee account for as long as they wish.”
With regard to the problems being faced by QFIs over attestation, the DEA official said the government had allowed all banks with branches in India and abroad to attest any QFI form but, in certain countries, there are no such banks, which is a problem. “The companies operating in this domain should use their influence to allow these countries and their regulator to allow more Indian banks to function in their soil,” he said.
