Foreign firms’ investment intensity in India has fallen since FY20: EAC-PM | Economy & Policy News

The report titled ‘An investigation into corporate profits and investment’ said the weighted-average investment intensity – the ratio of annual investment in fixed assets to the total assets held by a company at the beginning of the financial year – of Indian private firms partially recovered after the pandemic but has remained nearly unchanged since FY22. 

Gross fixed asset growth had risen to 10.64 per cent in FY15, before reaching 9.94 per cent in FY20. It fell to -1.06 per cent in FY21 during the pandemic and recovered to 6.1 per cent by FY24. The report, however, described the post-pandemic recovery as muted.

Separately, fixed-asset investment as a share of GDP among foreign-owned firms showed no recovery after FY21, while Indian business groups recorded a steady increase. Government-owned firms and Indian private companies saw a muted initial recovery, followed by a decline or broadly flat trend through FY24.

The paper also said that the nature of India’s post-pandemic investment recovery has changed. The FY20 investment peak was driven by a spike in investment intensity among large, asset-rich companies, with corporate assets concentrated around firms recording investment intensity of 12-14 per cent.

Those high-intensity outliers disappeared during the pandemic and have not re-emerged. Instead, the post-pandemic recovery has been driven by a broad-based increase in investment intensity among firms around the median of the distribution.

“An absence of this spike in recent years can be explained by an absence of ‘superstar firms’ operating in sub sectors expected to drive global factor productivity going forward, i.e., generative artificial intelligence and related sub-sectors,” said the paper, adding that such firms are typically able to scale innovations, invest heavily in research and development and generate higher returns on investment.

At the firm level, the paper found evidence of downward pressure on investment despite rising average profitability, with marginal profitability of new capital declining after the pandemic. Companies can therefore remain profitable on their existing assets while holding back fresh capital expenditure if they do not expect the next unit of investment to generate comparable returns, it said. 

“Marginal profitability can decline due to several reasons including higher competitive pressures from both domestic firms as well as imports. Export subsidies provided by trading partners like China are likely adding to this problem. Overcapacity issues in industry abroad can also dampen profitability expectations of domestic firms,” said the paper.

The authors also flagged generative AI as a potential reason for investment deferral. Firms may limit spending on existing technologies because rapid technological change could make those assets obsolete faster.

“Firms are likely to limit their investments in existing technology in anticipation of faster depreciation, and this effect is likely to reduce once the newer technological landscape becomes relatively stable,” it noted.