In the midst of the debate on foreign direct investment versus national security, finance ministry has opposed any restriction on flow of investment from any specific country and said a case-by-case scrutiny should address such concerns.
Responding to a note by the National Security Adviser, circulated by the Prime Minister's Office, finance ministry wrote back recently advocating full scrutiny of all FDI proposals but only on case-to-case basis and not on the basis of origin of investment, ministry sources said.
Opposing any kind of discrimination against FDI cases vis-a-vis domestic investment, the ministry has proposed that no country should be singled out on security grounds.
While all security-related scrutiny be made before any FDI proposal is cleared, it should not be discriminated against once permitted, according to a note submitted by the finance ministry to the PMO.
Security laws should be same for FDI and domestic investment, the ministry said, adding if they cannot check domestic investment, they would not scrutinise FDI as well.
The issue of security concerns relating to FDI arose after the presence of Egypt's Orascom Telecom in Hutchison-Essar came under severe criticism from the PMO in its review of potential threats to national security from FDI.
The Department of Telecom had also said that FDI and security should be dealt with separately, but the PMO has put the case of Orascom Telecom in its section on recent examples of sectoral threats.
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