Govt to release monthly data on outward investments

With India Inc emerging as an important player in the global merger and acquisition market, the government has decided to release the data on outward investments every month from next fiscal. The Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP) is closely working with the Reserve Bank of India, DIPP’s Joint Secretary Gopal Krishna told reporters here at a CII function.

At present, the government releases detailed foreign direct investment inflows to India on a monthly basis, Mr. Krishna said.

“There is a very good data base on inward investment, pretty great amount of detail information is there. But such kind of data for outward investment is still missing. Data about outward investment is very sketchy,” he said.

DIPP was working with a committee headed by RBI Deputy Governor Shyamala Gopinath regarding this. The committee has devised a format for detail collection of outward fund flows.

“RBI has devised a format and that will now be coming to us and filtering to us...now we can further analyse, exactly the way we analyse the inward investments,” he said.

Mr. Krishna said the data was likely to be released on monthly basis from April. “I hope that it will start from April, we release this on monthly basis like we release for inward investments,” he added.