"This is not just a figure. It is the commitment by French companies between 2008 and 2012," said the French Minister of Economy and Finance Christine Lagarde, while addressing a business forum in New Delhi.
She urged India to "reciprocate" and "further open up its retail and insurance sectors to foreign investors to pave way for French companies.
On his part, India's Planning Commission Deputy Chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia assured the French delegation that removing a foreign direct investment (FDI) cap on insurance and multi-brand retail "was very much on the government's agenda".
"The (Indian) government is in the process of amending the insurance legislation to pave the way for allowing 49 percent FDI in the sector," said Ahluwalia, who also attending the India-France Business Forum at the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry.
Opening up various sectors to greater FDI is an ongoing process in India, with many long-standing reforms delayed by domestic political deadlock.
India and France also signed a general framework agreement and four other pacts for deeper bilateral cooperation in the atomic energy sector.
After delegation-level talks between visiting French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who is on a four-day visit to India, and the country's Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, both sides also signed three other agreements.
Areva SA, one of France's main nuclear power companies, reached a $9.3 billion deal to build two European pressurized reactors of 1,650 megawatts each at Jaitapur in the western Indian state of Maharashtra.
The deal, signed with the Nuclear Power Corporation of India Limited, marked the first two of 20 nuclear reactors India wants to build to meet its soaring energy demand.
The two sides also signed an agreement on "Protection of Confidentiality of Technical Data and Information Relating to Cooperation in the Peaceful Uses of Nuclear Energy".
India's Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) and France's atomic energy commission, the Commissariat A L'energie Atomique Et Aux Energies Alternatives, reached yet another agreement in an attempt to enhance cooperation in the atomic energy sector by engaging both sides in the field of nuclear science and technology.
Besides an accord on intellectual property rights on the development of the peaceful uses of nuclear energy, the two sides also signed a pact for cooperation in the field of earth science and climate change.
India's Minister for Information and Broadcasting Ambika Soni and French Minister of Culture and Communication Frederic Mitterrand, separately, inked an agreement on film coproduction.
Sarkozy and Singh later met to discuss regional security, trade and investment. They also touched on plans for the structural reform of the international monetary system through the Group of 20 countries, currently headed by France.
