Foreign Direct Investment A Perspective on India and ASEAN Trade Bloc

In early 90’s India saw major policy changes being made in areas of financial sector, foreign trade sector, public sector, and social sector. These policy changes or the reforms were initiated to restructure the Indian economy and pull out the economy out of the cobwebs of ‘Hindu rate of growth’. Ever since then, India has become a key player in the world, more specifically, in the Asian region. India’s interaction increased with many Asian nations in the areas of economic ties, political harmony, tourism, trade and services and more importantly in the area of investments. The consequence of the above changes is quite evident in terms of investments made by Indian companies abroad and vice versa. This made India to focus on Southeast Asia and come out with the “Look East” policy, where major thrust was given to trade, investments, tourism, science and technology. Over the years the scope of relation between India and ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) has been steadily rising, as India became a sectoral dialogue partner with ASEAN in the year 1992 and in the year 1995 ASEAN invited India to become full fledged dialog partner and a member of ASEAN regional trade in the year 1996. Later, in the year 2002 a separate India-ASEAN summit was held in Cambodia. The present paper focuses on the interaction in terms of investments between India and ASEAN.