NRIs Keen On Real Estate Investment

Real estate investment tops the list of queries received by the Overseas Indian Facilitation Centre (OIFC) launched by the government.

"We are getting a lot of queries from overseas Indians about investing in property in India," Harish Kirpal of the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), who is chief executive of OIFC, said.

OIFC, a one-stop shop to help overseas Indians invest in India, was launched by the Ministry of Overseas Indian Affairs (MOIA) on May 28. The CII is the private sector partner and host institution of this not-for-profit trust.

Speaking about the response received by the centre since it was launched, Kirpal said going by the initial trend, real estate tops the list in terms of interest shown by overseas Indians while stock market investments come second.

"Lots of NRIs -non resident Indians and PIOs (persons of Indian origin) want to invest their small savings in the Indian stock market. We are in the process of guiding them in turning their savings into concrete investments," he said.

Share market, mutual funds and private equity funds are what the potential investors want to know about, he added.People are also showing an interest in the hospitality sector, especially with the Commonwealth Games coming up in New Delhi in 2010.

"Basically, we are focussing on four areas - investment in real estate, investing in the stock market, investing generally in India and setting up investment partnerships with states," said Kirpal.

Some queries don't have much to do with OIFC but the centre is nevertheless guiding information seekers to the right channels, he said. "People are interested in starting stress management courses and promoting tourism."

Stating that it is still early days for the centre, he added: "We are still getting used to the concept. We are planning a big publicity campaign and expect to make this centre really big in the next two-three months. As of now, we are strengthening the backend support, especially in the real estate sector."

"It will also establish a diaspora knowledge network by creating a database of overseas Indians, who would act as knowledge diaspora and whose knowledge resources could be utilised by using the ICT (Information and Communication Technology) platform," the minister added.

There are an estimated 25 million overseas Indians across 130 countries.

Source://Timesofindia