The Reserve Bank of India (RBI), on 5 June, widened the direct equity market access for overseas individual investors. It raised the investment limits for non-resident Indians (NRIs) and overseas citizens of India (OCIs), and extended the same facility to all Persons Resident Outside India (PROIs), converting the Budget 2026 announcement into regulatory reality in four months.
RBI Governor Sanjay Malhotra, announcing the decision at the Monetary Policy Committee meeting, said that the limits for NRI and OCI investments in listed equity instruments without Securities and Exchange Board of India’s (Sebi) registration, are being increased, and that the same facility is now being extended to all individual PROIs, at par with NRIs and OCIs.
The move operationalises a proposal first made in the Union Budget on 1 February 2026. Under the Portfolio Investment Scheme (PIS), the individual cap for a PROI has been doubled from 5% to 10% of a company’s paid-up capital, while the aggregate ceiling for all PROIs has been raised from 10% to 24%.
“This is the February 2026 Budget being executed, and executed quickly,” said Animesh Hardia, Senior Vice President, Quantitative Research at 1 Finance. “The RBI has moved it from intent to operation in four months, which, by the standards of Indian financial reform, is rapid, and the speed is itself the message.”
Hardia situated the measure in the broader context of foreign capital flows. “The measure arrived as one of five steps in the same statement aimed at attracting foreign capital, and it sits next to the other number the RBI Governor shared—foreign portfolio investors have pulled out $13.7 billion since April, almost all of it from equities. Institutional money moves in cycles, and right now, it is moving out. So India is widening the door for a different kind of investor, the NRI who buys shares in companies they grew up watching and holds them. That capital behaves more like household savings than trading positions,” he says.Kunal Valia, Founder of StatLane, noted the practical significance of the 5 June notification. “Today’s RBI MPC announcement is the central bank’s step to operationalise the Budget 2026 proposal, essentially converting the Finance Minister’s policy intent into a regulatory framework under PIS. The key addition from today is the explicit mention of no Sebi registration requirement, which simplifies the process further for NRIs and OCIs investing directly in Indian equities.”
The announcement was part of a broader package. The RBI also separately raised the Overseas Portfolio Investment (OPI) limit for resident individuals to 24%, up from 10%, giving high net-worth domestic investors more room to build concentrated positions in listed companies.
OPI governs how Indian residents invest in listed Indian companies through the overseas investment framework — raising this ceiling removes a meaningful constraint for high net-worth resident investors, who had hit the earlier 10% cap while building concentrated positions in listed companies they believed in.
Tanvi Kanchan, Associate Director and Head of NRI Business at Anand Rathi Share and Stock Brokers, called it a comprehensive liberalisation. “India has in one day widened access for foreign individuals to invest in Indian equities, extended zero-tax treatment to foreign holders of G-Secs, and given resident investors more room to build meaningful positions. This will help deepen India’s capital markets and make them genuinely competitive with global peers.”
Kanchan added that NRI investors, in particular, stand to benefit from the combined effect of the measures. “For NRI investors specifically, the combination of doubled equity limits and tax-free sovereign bond yields makes India the most accessible and return competitive it has been in years,” said Kanchan.
Hardia, however, cautioned that structural barriers remain. “For the NRIs, the ceilings were rarely the binding constraint. Taxation, repatriation and currency always mattered more, and that homework hasn’t changed.”
