Mumbai (22/09/2022): Today, the Reserve Bank released the data1 relating to financial performance of foreign direct investment (FDI) companies in India during the financial years 2019-20 and 2020-21 (https://dbie.rbi.org.in/DBIE/dbie.rbi?site=statistics#!2_46). The analysis is based on audited annual accounts of 2,059 companies, accounting for 39.1 per cent of the total paid-up capital (PUC) of FDI companies that had reported in the 2020-21 round of the Reserve Bank’s annual census of foreign liabilities and assets of Indian direct investment companies2.
Companies with direct investment from Mauritius, Singapore and USA accounted for nearly half of the sample companies; Netherland, Japan, the United Kingdom and Germany were other major direct investment sources. A major chunk of companies belonged to manufacturing, and information and communication sectors (Statement 1).
Explanatory notes to the statements are given in the Annex.
Highlights
- Performance of FDI companies reflected the highly adverse large-scale impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and the related restrictions during 2019-20 (last quarter) as well as 2020-21 (full financial year).
- Sales of the select FDI companies recorded low growth of 1.3 per cent and 0.2 per cent in 2019-20 and 2020-21, respectively (Statement 2).
- Aggregate sales of FDI companies in the manufacturing sector declined marginally during 2019-20 as well as in 2020-21; food products, electrical equipment, pharmaceutical, chemical and plastic products, however, recorded higher sales during the year (Statement 7).
- Manufacturing and operating expenses in the manufacturing sector declined in both the years due to curtailed business activities (Statements 2 and 7).
- Operating profits improved due to a steeper contraction in expenditure vis-à-vis sales. Lower outgo on taxes and interest payments permeated to significant accumulation in net profits (Statements 2 and 4).
- Higher profitability contributed to improvement in interest coverage ratio [ICR, measured as earnings before interest and taxes (EBIT) to interest expenses] across major sectors in 2020-21 (Statements 2 and 7).
- Selected FDI companies utilised over half of the incremental funds for fixed investment in both the years (Statements 3 and 6). Their investment in financial instruments increased substantially in 2020-21.
- Growth in net fixed assets of the select companies stood lower at 3.6 per cent in 2020-21 as compared with 15.7 per cent in the previous year (Statement 1).
