India mulls raising FDI approval threshold

The Indian government is considering raising the threshold for foreign direct investment (FDI) proposals requiring approval from the India — Cabinet Committee on Political Affairs (CCEA) from Rs 5,000 crore to Rs 15,000 crore. The proposal, currently at the discussion stage, aims to improve the investment climate, promote ease of doing business, and reflect the growing scale of investments. The CCEA, headed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, currently reviews FDI proposals above Rs 5,000 crore, while smaller proposals are handled by line ministries. The threshold has remained unchanged since November 2015. Separately, the government is considering easing downstream investment norms by exempting indirect foreign investment from fresh approval when the upstream domestic firm has already received approval. This would reduce repeated approvals for investments in sectors under the government approval route and from countries sharing a land border with India. The government has taken several steps to attract foreign inflows, with cumulative FDI crossing $1.16 trillion between April 2000 and March 2026. In FY26, gross FDI was $94.53 billion, and net FDI inflows improved to $6.9 billion. Economists project net FDI to rise to around $15 billion in FY27. The proposal follows a series of liberalisation measures, including the abolition of the Foreign Investment Promotion Board in 2017 and recent revisions to the FDI processing SOP by the India — Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade.