India's telecom FDI declined by over 90% last year

According to the data shared by union telecom minister Ashwini Vaishnaw in the Lok Sabha, foreign direct investment in India's telecom sector declined by more than 90 per cent in the last fiscal, writes ETV Bharat's Deputy New Editor Krishnanand Tripathi.

New Delhi: India's telecom FDI declined by more than 90% in the last fiscal. It is one of the sectors where flow of the foreign direct investment was severely crippled by the outbreak of Covid-19 global pandemic, as the FDI in telecom came down from a high of over $4,400 million to less than $400 million in just one year's time, showed the latest official data. According to the data shared by Ashwini Vaishnaw, the minister for communications & electronics and information technology, in the Lok Sabha, India received $2667.91 million in foreign direct investment in the telecom sector in FY 2018-19.

There was a sudden spike in FDI inflows to the telecom sector to $4,445.16 million, an increase of 1,777.25 million or increase of more than 66% in comparison with the FDI received in the sector in FY 2018-19. However, the FDI investment in the telecom sector suffered a drastic fall during the period of Covid-19 global pandemic which killed more than 4,26,000 people in the country and more than 4.2 million people worldwide.

Last year, the country received only $392.11 million, which is decline of over 90% compared to the FDI received in the telecom sector in 2019-20. However, the situation may improve this year as the country received $295.92 million FDI in telecom sector in the first month of the current fiscal, which is more than 75% of the total FDI received in the telecom sector last year.

In response to a question by the two Lok Sabha members, Heena Gavit and Unmesh Bhaiyya Saheb Patel, Communications and IT Minister Vaishnaw said though the National Digital Communications Policy (NDCP), 2018 aims to attract an investment of $100 billion in the digital communications sector but there is no specific target of attracting of FDI in the policy.