In the past two years, 80 Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) proposals from countries sharing land border with India were granted permission to invest in India, according to data provided by the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT) under the Right to Information Act (RTI). Almost all proposals were from China, an analysis of the data shows.
Aimed at stopping the opportunistic takeover of loss-making Indian companies by Chinese firms, by possibly taking advantage of the economic situation when the COVID-19 pandemic struck in March 2020, the government tweaked the FDI policy on April 18, 2020. It made prior government approval mandatory for foreign direct investments (FDI) from countries which share land border with India. Earlier, some of these proposals in non-critical sectors could be cleared under the automatic route. The decision coincided with the build-up of Chinese forces in Eastern Ladakh in April-May 2020 which took a violent turn on June 15, 2020 when 20 soldiers were killed in clashes with the Chinese.
