Gujarat’s GIFT City is working to emerge as a major international financial centre and compete with global hubs such as Singapore, Hong Kong, Dubai and London.
However, this did not create enough interest among global investors. Because here the focus is on the India growth story, not as much as doing global financial services, in an exclusive interview with NDTV’s Editor-in-Chief Rahul Kanwal on the show ‘Walk The Talk’, K Rajaraman, chairman of the International Financial Services Centres Authority (IFSCA), said, “The architecture of our financial centre is different from what Singapore or Dubai has done. He said that after Prime Minister Narendra Modi came to power in 2014, GIFT City initially functioned under executive orders issued by domestic financial regulators.
Rajaraman said the original idea behind GIFT City was to bring back financial businesses that had moved out of India, such as fund management and aircraft leasing.
The law provided GIFT City with a formal legal and regulatory framework. “At the end of the day, what are global investors looking at? Its board includes executive directors from regulators such as SEBI, RBI and PFRDA. He added that its journey as an international financial centre began after the Covid pandemic.
So, in 2019, the government introduced legislation to create the International Financial Services Centres Authority. Earlier reporting noted: GIFT City is seeing a rise in interest from global financial companies, with registrations growing from around 100 to nearly 1,250 in the last few years. Earlier reporting noted: Kaul said that the regulations for GIFT City’s international financial services centre came in 2019 and were notified in 2020. Earlier reporting noted: “When we began, there were just about 100 registrations. Today, it’s close to 1,250,” he said, adding that around 45 new registrations take place every month.
They are looking at whether there is policy stability, there is legal certainty, and there is also tax certainty,” Rajaraman said. Rajaraman said it is not a completely standalone regulator Although IFSCA is often described as a kind of “super regulator” for GIFT City. Rajaraman said this structure gives GIFT City a strong connection with India’s domestic financial system. He said the city now has a legal framework, tax certainty and regulations benchmarked against global standards. In an exclusive interview with NDTV’s Editor-in-Chief Rahul Kanwal on the show ‘Walk The Talk’, GIFT City CEO Sanjay Kaul said the financial hub is now at a stage where more companies are looking at it as a serious place to do business.
