Now Reading: Gift City attracts Indian investors but foreign firms wary of reporting rules
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Gift City attracts Indian investors but foreign firms wary of reporting rules
Gift City attracts Indian investors but foreign firms wary of reporting rules
Gift City has seen the number of Global Access Providers climb to 18 by July from a handful a year ago, and 6,044 investors now trade through the India International Exchange. Total…
Gift City has seen the number of Global Access Providers climb to 18 by July from a handful a year ago, and 6,044 investors now trade through the India International Exchange. Total traded value rose 11% year-on-year to $39 million in the March quarter.
However, nearly 90% of those investors are Indians, and foreign firms are holding back. Market participants say transaction-level reporting required by the International Financial Services Centres Authority is a key deterrent: unlike Dubai and Singapore, which ask for annual and quarterly compliance reports, Gift City demands reporting for every trade executed on a global exchange.
The lack of an omnibus structure and constraints on data transfer add to the hesitancy. One executive said a large influx of foreign brokers bringing customers to Gift City is not expected in the next six to eight months.
Indian Opinion Analysis
Gift City was conceived as India's answer to Singapore and Dubai, but its regulatory architecture was designed primarily around inbound Indian capital under the Liberalised Remittance Scheme. Transaction-level reporting, which foreign firms find onerous, is a direct consequence of that design: the IFSCA needs visibility into every trade to enforce LRS limits and derivative bans. The GAP framework is barely two years old, and the 18 intermediaries now live are a fast start, but nearly all serve Indian clients. The next milestone is September 2025, when the IFSCA is expected to finalise the omnibus account structure that foreign brokers say is essential. Without it, Gift City risks remaining a satellite of Indian savings rather than a node in global capital flows.
Source: livemint.com
This brief was synthesised by AI from the source linked above.
