Deepak Shenoy, Founder and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Capitalmind, a financial advisory firm, wants the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) to increase the limit for mutual funds investing in foreign stocks by over 10 times to $50 billion. The RBI has set a limit of $8 billion which Shenoy argued has not been changed since 2009.

Highlighting the gap in a social media post on X dated 29 December, the Capitalmind CEO wrote that while mutual funds are restricted, individuals can invest up to $250,000 per person per year via a foreign broker in owning overseas stocks. “This sounds ridiculous,” he said.

“Why do we still have restrictions on Indian mutual funds investing in foreign stocks, when we can do the same thing as individuals (with a $250K limit per person per year)? RBI has a $8bn limit that it hasn’t changed since 2009 or so. Instead of RBI reserves, let’s own stocks!” said the Capitalmind founder and CEO in his post on the platform X.

Shenoy also highlighted investors’ inconvenience of not being able to invest in an Indian mutual fund which owns foreign stocks, but then those investors have to take their money to a foreign broker in order to own that foreign asset. 

Shenoy also shared a video in his post in which he talked about the same issue with the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) imposing limits on foreign investment.

“Why do we have a $7 or $8 billion limit on Indian mutual funds buying US stocks when the money is in India, and the US stocks are controlled by an Indian mutual fund-owning thing. Its actually an Indian asset, why should RBI own all the dollars, why can’t people own the dollars?”

“Instead of $8 billion, make it $50 billion,” said the Capitalmind CEO.

RBI owning US dollar

On the RBI owning US dollar front, Deepak Shenoy said that the central bank does not need to own the dollars, giving an example of how the RBI is a representation of people, if people own an asset, the country owns it.

“It’s the same thing if I own the US dollar, and if RBI owns it. The RBI doesn’t need to own it. It’s (RBI) is a representation of us, the people. If I own gold, then it actually means India owns gold,” said the executive in the video. 

He also highlighted how the central bank has classified all the gold imports as imports and how they are not, they are financial assets. 

“They should be considered as assets of the country. But we don’t consider it so. We don’t consider that me owning a US asset through an Indian mutual fund is an Indian asset, an Indian ownership of foreign asset,” said Shenoy.

He also put forward his views to highlight that a change of mind can push RBI to be free and the central bank to reduce some of its reserves and give people an option to exercise ownership of those foreign assets.

“As the more free I (RBI) make it, the more foreign assets we control,” according to the executive.

Through the video Shenoy also highlighted the emotions of the Tata Group owning the Jaguar Land Rover (JLR), and how at a global scale it represents Indian ownership of a foreign asset.

“There are a lot of worldwide brands that we should own, we would own a lot more of them if we were allowed to and we could own them through mutual funds,” he said.