India lags behind other Asian states in FDI

India continues to lag behind China, Hong Kong, Singapore and Thailand in terms of FDI and share in global trade despite a virtual record performance.

India continues to lag behind other Asian developing countries like China, Hong Kong, Singapore and Thailand in terms of FDI and share in global trade despite a virtual record performance this fiscal.

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Revealing this, the pre-Budget Economic Survey tabled in Parliament on Thursday said FDI inflows of 10 select Asian developing countries in 2001 showed that India's FDI inflows accounted for a mere 0.5 per cent share of world total against an impressive 6.4 per cent for China, 3.1 per cent for Hong Kong and 1.2 per cent for Singapore.

Based on data compiled by the World Investment Report, 2002, and the International Financial Statistics, 2003, though India's share in world exports has improved from 0.67 per cent to 0.7 per cent in 2001, it ranked ninth among the 10 countries followed only by Sri Lanka.

In absolute terms, India garnered FDI worth a mere 3.4 billion dollars in 2001 compared to a whopping 46.8 billion dollars by China, 22.8 billion dollars by Hong Kong, 8.6 billion dollars by Singapore and 3.8 billion dollars by Thailand.

The Survey, however, sought to underplay the difference between India and China stating that "it appears that the gap between these two estimates may be exaggerated owing to technical issues in measurement".

It further noted that with RBI currently evaluating some modification in the way that India measures its FDI, these estimates could increase for India.

With exports of 43.3 billion dollars in 2001, India accounted for a mere 0.7 per cent share of world trade.