Overseas Indian Facilitation Centre launched

New Delhi, May 28 (UNI) Aimed at accelerating investment by Overseas Indians, the Centre today launched an institutional platform to act as a "one stop shop" for the 25-million strong Indian diaspora spread across 130 countries.

The "Overseas Indian Facilitation Centre" (OIFC) will function as a neutral body.

It has been registered as a not-for-profit trust which is promoted by the Overseas Indian Affairs (OIA) Ministry and managed by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII). The office of the trust would be in the National Capital Region of Delhi.

An agreement between the OIA Ministry and the CII was signed today for the establishment of the Centre, ushering in a major public-private partnership to provide a host of investment advisory services efficiently and on a real time basis.

OIA Minister Vayalar Ravi inaugurated a website---www.oifc.in--of the Overseas Indian Facilitation Centre, which was promised to the Indian Diaspora by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh at the 5th Pravasi Bharatiya Divas held here in early January this year.

Mr Ravi told mediapersons later that the trust would be self-sufficient within the next three years.

He said though India was already the highest recipient of remittances from overseas Indians (23 billion US dollars), the investment by them had been far short of the potential, given their profile.

The centre will facilitate a two-way flow of overseas Indian investment into India as well as promote business-to-business partnerships of Indian businesses with overseas Indians.

Mr Ravi said the OIFC would promote overseas Indian investment into India and facilitate business partnerships, by giving authentic and real time information and also by providing paid handholding services to the potential overseas Indian investors.

It would operate a "Diaspora Knowledge Network" by creating a data base of Overseas Indians, who would act as knowledge diaspora and whose knowledge resources could be utilised by using ICT platform.

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