A formal notification on raising foreign direct investment (FDI) limit in the telecom sector will come shortly after the government fine tunes the guidelines, IT and Communications Minister Dayanidhi Maran said Friday.

"I am in touch with the department of telecommunications. The whole thing will come about in a couple of weeks," Maran said in an informal interaction with reporters here.

The FDI cap, which was raised from 49 percent to 74 percent in the last fiscal, has to be notified first for it to become effective.

The notification will come after the finance ministry completes fine tuning the guidelines for allowing FDI in the cash-starved telecom sector, which requires an $8 billion investment in infrastructure.

Asked about the Left parties' opposition to raising FDI cap in the sector, Maran said: "The FDI issue has gone through enough controversies." He declined to comment further.

The minister said work on FDI guidelines picked up pace after the Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI) wrote to the finance ministry on the issue.

Once the new FDI cap is notified, companies would be able to access foreign capital markets to raise funds, besides enjoy excise duty exemption on capital goods for mobile handset manufacturing and customs duty exemption on telecom grade optical fibres and mobile switching centres.

--Indo-Asian News Service