Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman presents the Interim Budget 2024 in the Lok Sabha, at Parliament House in New Delhi on Feb. 1, 2024.
| Photo Credit: PTI

India is negotiating bilateral investment treaties with different countries with a view to promote foreign inflows, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said on February 1. She said that foreign direct investment (FDI) 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 bilateral treaties with countries, such as the UK. 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 UK over the retrospective levy of taxes.

Align treaties with global practices

Commenting on bilateral investment treaties, economic think tank GTRI (Global Trade Research Initiative) said that India needs to align its treaties with global investment practices, address the negative perception caused by the mass treaty cancellations and reflect on its negotiation skills. New agreements should ideally resolve these concerns, it said in a statement.

GTRI said that India has cancelled 77 of its over 80 bilateral investment treaties (BIT) by 2016, as they didn’t align with its interests. “Now, it is renegotiating with 37 countries using the restrictive 2016 Model BIT, which may lead to protracted negotiations due to its narrow ‘investment’ definition, vague terms, omission of principles like ‘fair and equitable treatment’, and Most-Favoured Nation status,” GTRI co-founder Ajay Srivastava said. He added that the model BIT also demands investors seek local solutions for at least five years before arbitration, making new BITs challenging for other countries.

Foreign direct investment (FDI) equity inflows in India declined 24 per cent to USD 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 per cent to USD 32.9 billion during the period under review against USD 38.94 billion in April-June 2022.

The top investor countries include Singapore, Mauritius, the US, the UK, 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.

At end-June 2023, long-term debt (with original maturity of above one year) was placed at $505.5 billion. File
| Photo Credit: K. Pichumani

India’s external debt at end-June 2023 was placed at $629.1 billion, recording an increase of $4.7 billion over its level at end-March 2023 according to data released by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) on September 28.

The external debt to GDP ratio declined to 18.6% at end-June 2023 from 18.8% at end-March 2023, the RBI said.

Valuation effect due to the appreciation of the U.S. dollar vis-à-vis the major currencies such as yen and SDR2 amounted to $3.1 billion. Excluding the valuation effect, external debt would have increased by $7.8 billion instead of $4.7 billion at end-June 2023 over end-March 2023.

At end-June 2023, long-term debt (with original maturity of above one year) was placed at $505.5 billion, recording an increase of $9.6 billion over its level at end-March 2023.

Balance of Payments

Meanwhile, India’s current account deficit (CAD) narrowed to $9.2 billion (1.1% of GDP) in Q1:2023-24 from $17.9 billion (2.1% of GDP) in Q1:2022-23 but it was higher than $1.3 billion (0.2% of GDP) in the preceding quarter, according to the RBI’s data.

The widening of CAD on a quarter-on-quarter basis was primarily on account of a higher trade deficit coupled with a lower surplus in net services and decline in private transfer receipts.
Net services receipts decreased sequentially, primarily due to a decline in exports of computer, travel and business services, though remained higher on a year-on- year (y-o-y) basis.

Net outgo on the income account, primarily reflecting payments of investment income, declined to $10.6 billion in Q1:2023-24 from $12.6 billion in Q4:2022-23, though higher than a year ago.
In the financial account, net foreign direct investment decreased to $5.1 billion from $13.4 billion a year ago.

International Investment Position

Net claims of non-residents on India increased by $12.1 billion during Q1:2023-24 and stood at $379.7 billion as at end-June 2023.

The rise in net claims of non-residents during the quarter was on account of higher rise in foreign-owned financial assets in India ($36.2 billion) when compared with Indian residents’ overseas financial assets ($24.1 billion) according to data released by the RBI.

Increase in reserve assets ($16.6 billion) was the largest contributor to the rise in Indian residents’ foreign assets during April-June 2023, followed by direct investment, loans and trade credit.

Inward portfolio investment ($15.0 billion) and foreign direct investment ($8.9 billion) together accounted for two thirds of the rise in foreign liabilities of Indian residents.