NEW DELHI PTI: Renowned industrialist Sri Chand Hinduja urged finance ministerManmohan Singh to give preference to NRIs over foreigners besides removing certain tax anomalies to boost NRI investments in India.
Hinduja heading a delegation of Sindhi businessmen met Manmohan Singh and submitted a pre-budget memorandum for the minister regretting that the full potential of NRT investment had not been tapped due to lack of preference and cited the example of China where overseas Chinese got preferential treatment.
The memorandum said reforms initiated by the Narasimha Rao government had resulted in unprecedented interest in the Indian Capital markets by overseas investors and investment managers.
To attract NRI investments the Sindh’s suggested massive investments in infrastructure adding that government should start privatization of infrastructural projects in roads and telecommunication.
The memorandum said while securities exchange board of Indi; fad played a very useful role in disciplining the market mechanism there was need to article at a clear reform policy for the secondary market. Certain procedural reforms like RBI approval for subscriptions by NRIs were also needed
It suggested that Indian financial institutions should take advantage of the buoyant market conditions and unload some of their holdings.
Article extracted from this publication >> January 21, 1994
