Annual return on Foreign
Liabilities and Assets it is required to be submitted by Indian Resident
Companies which have received FDI and/ or made overseas investment in any of
the previous year(s), including current year by July 15 every year. Non-filing
of the return before due date is violation of Law and treating this as a
violation of FEMA penalty clause may be invoked.
FLA return is mandatory under FEMA 1999 and
companies are required to submit the same based on audited or unaudited account
by 15th July every year.
In case company’s accounts are not
audited before the due date of submission the FLA Return should be
submitted based on unaudited provisional account and can be revised when the
accounts gets audited.
FLA is required to be submitted by :
i. Indian resident companies which have received FDI (foreign direct investment) and/or made FDI abroad (i.e. overseas investment) in the previous year(s) including the current year i.e. who holds foreign Assets or Liabilities in their Balance Sheets.
ii. If the company has not ‘received any fresh FDI and/or ODI in the latest year but the company has outstanding FDI and/or ODI
iii. If the Partnership firms, Branches or Trustees have any outward FDI outstanding as on 31st March of the reporting year, then they are required to file FLA with dummy CIN. ( After getting dummy CIN from RBI for filling the excel based FLA return only and not for any other purpose).
No FLA is required to be submitted by:
i. If the Indian company does not have any outstanding investment in respect of inward and outward FDI as on 31st March of reporting year.
ii. If a company has received only share application money and does not have any foreign direct investment or overseas direct investment outstanding as on 31st March of the reporting year.
iii. If all non-resident shareholders of a company has transferred their shares to the residents during the reporting period and the company does not have any outstanding investment in respect of inward and outward FDI as on 31st March of reporting year.
iv. If a company has issued shares to non-resident on Non-Repatriable basis because such Non –repatriable shares are not considered as foreign investment
Other significant points while filing FLA
i. No Financial Statements or any other attachment are required to be attached with the FLA return
ii. Filled-in the Excel based FLA return is required to be submitted by 15 July through official email id of any authorized person of the company before due date for compliance purpose.
iii. On validated successful submission of FLA . Acknowledgement will be forwarded on E Mail ID by RBI and in case of discrepancy resubmission is required after removing the discrepancies.
iv. FLA Return and Annual Performance Report (APR) for ODI are two different returns and monitored by two different departments of RBI. So you are required to submit both the returns if these are applicable for your company.
