With a view to promoting the ease of doing business in India, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), through its earlier notifications, had launched a module for reporting, under Foreign Direct Investment (FDI), through eBiz portal of the Ministry of Commerce & Industry, Government of India. This has enabled the online filing of the following returns with the RBI:
i. Advance Remittance Form (ARF) which is used by the companies to report the FDI inflows to RBI;
ii. FCGPR Form which a company sub mits to RBI for reporting the issue of eligible instruments to the overseas investor against the above mentioned FDI inflow; and
iii. FCTRS Form which is submitted to RBI for transfer of securities between resident and person outside India.
At present both the options, i.e. online filing and physical filing of abovementioned forms, are available to the users.
The RBI, vide its circular no. 40/RBI, dated February 1, 2016, has issued the directions that from February 8, 2016 onwards, the physical filing of forms ARF, FCGPR and FCTRS will be discontinued and forms submitted in online mode, only through e-Biz portal, will be accepted.
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