The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has lifted a major roadblock for investments in the International Financial Services Centre (IFSC) at GIFT City, Gujarat, through the Liberalised Remittance Scheme (LRS) route.

Indian residents can now make remittances to IFSCs under the LRS framework. They are allowed to open a foreign currency account (FCA) in IFSC. Until now, any funds lying idle in FCA for up to 15 days had to be repatriated to the domestic rupee account.

A new RBI circular has allowed unutilised funds to be repatriated and surrendered to an authorised dealer bank within 180 days.

The new rules remove the ambiguity surrounding this issue and bring remittances into IFSC at par with foreign remittances under the LRS framework, which allows for a longer 180-day window for repatriation of unutilised funds.