FDI: Payment in advance for VPN accounts- reporting on e-biz platform

For the convenience of reporting transactions under FDI, the Reserve Bank of India, under the support of the e-Biz project of the Government of India, has enabled the filing of the .Advance Remittance Form (ARF) – used by the companies to report the foreign direct investment (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.

The design of the reporting platform which has been operational from February 19, 2015 enables the customer to login into the e-Biz portal, download the reporting forms (ARF and FCGPR), complete and then upload the same onto the portal using their digitally signed certificates. The Authorised Dealer Banks (ADs) will be required to download the completed forms, verify the contents from the available documents, if necessary by calling for additional information from the customer and then upload the same for RBI to process and allot the Unique Identification Number (UIN).

RBI in its circular dated 17.04.2015 advised that financial aspects for using the Virtual Private Network (VPN) accounts obtained from National Informatics Centre (NIC) for accessing the e-Biz portal have now been finalised in consultation with Government of India, Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP) and NIC. The details are as follows:

The VPN account will be in the name of the individual users and will be coterminous with the lifetime of the Digital Signing (Class 2) certificates (which is for a maximum period of two years) issued by Institute for Development and Research in Banking Technology (IDRBT), Hyderabad;

AD Category-I banks will be required to credit (through NEFT/RTGS) the payment in advance for the VPN accounts (@ Rs.9,654/- per account for a block of two years) directly to National Informatics Centre Services Inc’s (NICSI) bank account as under:

Name of Bank  : ICICI Bank

Branch            : ICICI Bank CMS

Account No     : NICSIPPCDL141571

IFSC Code      : ICIC0000104

After making the payment, the AD bank may fill up the details in the ‘Payment Reference Form’ and forward the same to through email.