With strong governmental support, FDI has helped the Indian economy grow tremendously. But with $34 billion in FDI in 2007, India gets only about 25% of the FDI in China.
Foreign direct investment (FDI) in India has played an important role in the development of the Indian economy. FDI in India has in a lot of ways enabled India to achieve a certain degree of financial stability, growth and development. This money has allowed India to focus on the areas that needed a boost and economic attention, and address the various problems that continue to challenge the country.
India has continually sought to attract FDI from the world’s major investors. In 1998 and 1999, the Indian national government announced a number of reforms designed to encourage and promote a favorable business environment for investors.
FDIs are permitted through financial collaborations, through private equity or preferential allotments, by way of capital markets through euro issues, and in joint ventures. FDI is not permitted in the arms, nuclear, railway, coal or mining industries.
A number of projects have been implemented in areas such as electricity generation, distribution and transmission, as well as the development of roads and highways, with opportunities for foreign investors.
The Indian national government also granted permission for FDIs to provide up to 100% of the financing required for the construction of bridges and tunnels, but with a limit on foreign equity of INR 1,500 crores, approximately $352.5 million.
Currently, FDI is allowed in financial services, including the growing credit card business. These also include the non-banking financial services sector. Foreign investors can buy up to 40% of the equity in private banks, although there is condition that these banks must be multilateral financial organizations. Up to 45% of the shares of companies in the global mobile personal communication by satellite services (GMPCSS) sector can also be purchased.
In 2007, India received $34 billion in FDI, a huge growth compared to the previous years, but significantly less than the $134 billion that flowed into China. Although the Chinese approval process is complex, China continues to outshine India as a choice destination for foreign investors. Why does India, a country with resources and a skilled workforce, lag so far behind China in FDI amounts?
Physical infrastructure is the biggest hurdle that India currently faces, to the extent that regional differences in infrastructure concentrates FDI to only a few specific regions. While many of the issues that plague India in the aspects of telecommunications, highways and ports have been identified and remedied, the slow development and improvement of railways, water and sanitation continue to deter major investors.
Federal legislation is another perverse impediment for India. Local authorities in India are not part of the approval process and the large bureaucratic structure of the central government is often perceived as a breeding ground for corruption. Foreign investment is seen as a slow and inefficient way of doing business, especially in a paperwork system that is shrouded in red tape.
How will Wal-Mart affect other Indian retailers?
In all of the countries Wal-Mart has set up shop it has put other retailers out of business and driven down wages. Wal-Mart has a clearly defined anti-union policy aimed at preventing its work force from gaining any collective bargaining power which could result in increased wages, covered health benefits and job security. Many reports have been written documenting the economic and eventual social and environmental degradation which occurs when Wal-Mart “comes to town”.
“Over the course of [a few years after Wal-Mart entered a community], retailers' sales of men’s' and boys' apparel dropped 44% on average, hardware sales fell by 31%, and lawn and garden sales fell by 26%. In towns without Wal-Marts that are close to towns with Wal-Marts, sales in general merchandise declined immediately after Wal-Mart stores opened. After ten years, sales declined by a cumulative 34%.”
[Kenneth Stone at Iowa State University, “Impact of the Wal-Mart Phenomenon on Rural Communities”].
Wal-Mart and India
• Wal-Mart is seeking to open its own retail chain throughout India.
• India's $250 billion retail business is the eighth largest in the world and has the potential to grow 7 per cent by 2011. [McKinsey Report] For a company already dominating the world markets, this is an un-passable opportunity.
• The owners of Wal-Mart stand to gain enormous profits from this move while India’s economy will suffer and its workers will be subjugated to the unfair work practices of this Multinational Behemoth.
Until now, foreign companies have been restricted to serving only as wholesalers in India. That has already helped create more modern distribution networks, often while generating better prices for farmers and other producers, and giving customers better deals, too.
But expanding the foreign presence to retailing has been seen as the necessary next step for modernists like Singh, who has been urging the move for years. Praise for his announcement came from India's corporations and some of its 175 million farmers, who see the move as part of a wave of changes that might help jolt a slowing economy.
And opponents – representing the 34 million people who work in retail and wholesale businesses, as well as left-leaning politicians – were just as loud.
On Monday, leaders of two opposition parties said finance minister, Pranab Mukherjee, had agreed to a delay. Mukherjee is expected to make a statement in Parliament on Wednesday.
All of this places Wal-Mart in a position hardly new to the company: at the center of a raging debate that pits the multinational giant from Bentonville, Ark., against local mom-and-pop businesses.
For more than a year, Wal-Mart has been operating a wholesale outlet in this northern city known for its fertile farms and hearty food. Local businessmen like Ravi Mahajan, whose family has had a wholesale general store in the narrow alleys of the Imam Nasir market for 40 years, say their sales have been cut in half as their customers – retail shopkeepers – stock up at Wal-Mart.
If the government eventually lets foreign firms expand beyond wholesaling to open retail stores, Mahajan said, many of his retail customers would be forced out of business, while squeezing out traders like himself who have long served as the crucial middleman in Indian commerce.
"We'll be destroyed," Mahajan said last week, minutes after he and dozens of other traders burned an effigy with a bloated belly and a crudely drawn face, meant to represent multinational marauders.
But Indian business is far from united in opposing foreign retailers.
Farmers like Avtar Singh Sidhu, who sells potatoes to PepsiCo for its Lays chips and has sold baby corn and other vegetables to Wal-Mart's local partner, the Indian conglomerate Bharti, argues that foreign retailers will be a boon to India's struggling agricultural sector. The multinationals, he said, will buy directly from farmers and pay better prices than local wholesalers.
Already, he said, PepsiCo is offering 6 rupees per kilo (or 11 cents) for his potatoes, while local traders offer only 3 rupees (6 cents). "We need more competition," Sidhu said.
The announcement by Singh's administration on Nov. 24 called for allowing foreign companies like Wal-Mart to team up with Indian partners to open retail stores in metropolitan areas with more than 1 million people. Jalandhar has 2.1 million people.
The plan ran counter to the views of many politicians who say a slower approach is needed to protect indigenous firms and the rural poor.
But Singh and his backers have argued that foreign retailers could help reduce chronically high food inflation – which has run around 10 percent for the last year, on top of 20 percent increases the year before. The retail proposal, proponents say, could improve the lot of the more than a half billion Indians still tied to the land, by improving the supply system from farms to consumers. An estimated one-third of some types of vegetables and fruits rot before ever reaching retail shelves.
Speaking of the Nov. 24 announcement, an adviser to Singh, Raghuram Rajan, an economist at the University of Chicago, said, "This is a bold move, and I think this is a necessary move."
At present, barely 6 percent of India's $470 billion in retail sales takes place in organized retail stores, according to Technopak, a Indian consulting firm. The rest takes place in small shops. By contrast, organized retail makes up more than 20 percent of sales in China and 36 percent in Brazil – the two emerging economies to which India most frequently compares itself. (The figure is 85 percent in the United States.)
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