Foreign Exchange Management Act (FEMA) plays a crucial role in expanding India’s interface with the rest of the world, according to AK Pandey, Chief General Manager of Foreign Exchange Department of Reserve Bank of India (RBI).

Speaking at the ‘FEMA exhibition-cum-interface’, organised by RBI in Manipal on Friday, he said the country’s interface with the rest of the world is growing in the context of programmes such as ‘Make in India’, ‘Startup India’ and ‘Digital India’. In such a situation, FEMA becomes important in enlarging the interface with the rest of the world.

‘Complex tangle’ Enacted in 1999, FEMA was a regulation with 25 notifications to start with. The dynamic nature of foreign exchange management made way to several amendments to the Act within a short span of time. This has led to a situation that the Act, in the shape of circulars and notifications, has become a rather complex tangle, he said.

If the entrepreneurs, investors, students, exporters, importers, citizens, and corporates are to be guided properly, the guidelines must be simple and comprehensible, Pandey said.

Delivering the presidential address, Eugene E Karthak, Regional Director, RBI Bengaluru, said that many people are getting SMS, emails and phone calls that inform them that they have won millions of dollars. People should be careful about anything that comes easy through such schemes.

Many a time literate people fall pray to such scams because they are greedy, he said.

Arun Shrivastav, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of Syndicate Bank, said the RBI has been interacting with bankers, industry and students in outreach programmes like the one conducted in Manipal.

Such meetings provide RBI feedback from ground level enabling it to formulate its policies, strategies and rules and regulations, he said.

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