India Trade — Sector & Policy Recommendations

Did the money actually show up? FDI equity inflow vs. PLI scheme launch dates

Tests whether India's PLI schemes caused a measurable rise in REAL inbound FDI equity (DPIIT/RBI-tracked money that arrived) — not the government's self-reported "committed investment" figures cited elsewhere in this repo, and not IEM filings, which are intent, not capital. Uses DPIIT sector/state FDI-equity tables, PIB scheme-launch announcements, and cross-checks every claim against IBEF's published FDI benchmark page.

SOURCES: 8 parallel research passes, each citing primary DPIIT (dpiit.gov.in) sector/state FDI-equity tables and PIB (pib.gov.in) scheme-launch releases directly. Cross-checked against ibef.org/economy/foreign-direct-investment (DPIIT-sourced, retrieved 2026-07-19). Retrieved 2026-07-19.
Data-quality findings· IBEF cross-check· Sector verdicts· Control-sector test· State-level findings

Before the numbers: how this data actually works

Read this first — it changes how every figure below should be read

Cross-check against IBEF's FDI page

ibef.org/economy/foreign-direct-investment — DPIIT-sourced, updated Jul 2026

Sector by sector: launch date vs. actual FDI equity inflow

Amber bar = the fiscal year a scheme launched in

The control test: what happened in sectors with no PLI scheme at all

Inorganic Chemicals · Plastics (proxy) · Aircraft & Spacecraft (proxy), FY18-19 → FY24-25
No-PLI control sectors, avg. change
−44.6%
PLI sectors, avg. change
+30.7%

The gap is real, but it's carried almost entirely by Pharma and Medical Devices' clean climbs plus Electronics' fragile late-cycle spike — not by all six PLI sectors evenly. Auto, Steel, and White Goods declined at rates comparable to or worse than the no-PLI control sectors over the identical window. The honest reading is sector-specific, not a blanket PLI effect: roughly half of the PLI sectors show a real, distinguishable-from-baseline rise; half do not.

State-level: does the hub-state FDI data hold up?

DPIIT state-wise data exists only from October 2019 onward
StatePolicyFDI equity inflow, $M (by FY)Finding
Errata & methodology notes
  • No verdict here is a proof of causation. Every sector/state finding is a correlation test against a launch date, with named confounders attached — not a controlled experiment.
  • DPIIT revises historical figures release to release ("revalidated/reconciled in line with RBI") — treat every number as accurate to a few percent, not to the decimal.
  • Domestic-capital-dominance findings (Jio/Gujarat, Tata Electronics/Assam) are illustrative smoking-gun cases, verified for those specific deals — not a full sector/state accounting of foreign vs. domestic capital.
  • IEM data, where it appears, is investment intent (mixes domestic and foreign capital) — it is not used as evidence for any verdict above.
  • Underlying data: data/fdi_vs_pli_launch_2026-07-19.json.