China Far Ahead of India in Attracting Foreign Investment

China was far ahead of India in attracting foreign direct investment because it took "immediate" decisions, an Indian cabinet minister said Monday in New Delhi.

"When information technology (IT) stocks were a rage, China raised 17 billion U.S. dollars by placing IT stocks on the American market three years back," Indian Disinvestment Minister Arun Shourie was quoted by the Press Trust of India as saying in the Rajya Sabha, upper house of the Indian parliament, which was in monsoon session here.

China also raised 15 billion dollars by placing telecom stocks on the U.S. markets in the following year, Shourie added.

"We're still debating on diesel prices even as China has placed shares of state-owned oil plants within three months of its decision-making on the U.S. markets through disinvestment," he noted.

The minister also criticized India's "feeble" attempts at maintaining its IT lead in the world arena, again citing China's example which had become the third largest exporter of IT hardware.

"There are many reasons why investments are not coming and this includes cross subsidization in railways and power sector," he said, adding these were acting as a deterrent for the investors.

The public investment levels had fallen by 23 percent, said the minister, adding that the government believed that fall in the investment levels and some other adverse factors had led to the current economic slowdown even though the rural policies had helped reduce the number of poor people in the population.

Overseas Investment Keeps Rising in China

China continued to be a good destination for international investors in the first seven months of this year.

According to the latest statistics released at an investment forum Monday in Tianjin Municipality of China, a total of 14,058 foreign-funded enterprises were set up in China during the period.

The country had attracted some 40.3 billion US dollars of contracted overseas investment and 24.2 billion US dollars had already been put into use, according to the figure released by the Ministry of Foreign Trade and Economic Cooperation.

The contracted overseas investment duringhe first seven months of this year was 45.77 percent more than that in the same period of last year, the statistics showed.

In July alone, the figures show, 2,085 enterprises were set up, 6.9 billion US dollars-worth of overseas investment contracts were signed and a total of 3.5 billion US dollars of overseas funds had been put into real use, up respectively 16.48 percent, 98.24 percent and 28.96 percent over the same period last year.

Experts attributed the rapid increase of overseas investment in China to such factors as the capital flow driven by the slow-down of the world economy, and China's coming entry into the World Trade Organization.

By the end of this July, China had altogether approved 378,402 foreign-funded enterprises, with 717 billion US dollars of contractual overseas investment, and 372.8 billion US dollars of realized overseas investment.






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