Reporting under the FDI Scheme on the E-Biz Platform

With a view to promoting the ease of reporting transactions, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) issued Circular No.77 dated February 12, 2015 thereby easing reporting of transactions under Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) allowed filing of Returns with RBI through e-Biz platform.

Following returns can be filed with the RBI using the e-Biz platform:

·       Advance Remittance Form (ARF) – used by the companies to report the FDI inflow to RBI; and

·       FCGPR Form – which a company submits to RBI for reporting the issue of eligible instruments to the overseas investor against the above mentioned FDI inflow.

To use this online facility customer has to download the respective forms by logging into the e-Biz portal, and then upload the completed forms onto the portal along with their digitally signed certificates. After verifying the contents of documents uploaded, Authorized Dealer Bank will upload the same for RBI to process and allot the Unique Identification Number (UIN).

ARF and FCGPR services of RBI will be operational on the e-Biz platform during this week i.e. on February 19, 2015. The user manual for the two services has been Annexed to the Circular, which can be accessed here. The ADs will be required to access the e-Biz portal (which is hosted on the National Informatics Centre (NIC) servers) using a Virtual Private Network (VPN) Account obtained from NIC. The financial aspects for obtaining/using the VPN accounts is being finalised in consultation with Government of India, DIPP and NIC and is yet to be informed.

The online reporting on the e-Biz platform is an additional facility provided to the Indian companies to undertake the ARF and FCGPR reporting whereas the manual system of reporting as prescribed in terms of A.P. (DIR Series) Circular No. 102 dated February 11, 2014 would continue until further notified by the RBI.