Invest in our infrastructure, Pranab urges US Inc
30 Jan 2012
Seeking US investment in the infrastructure sector which needs $1 trillion in the 12th five-year plan to meet the government's targets, finance minister Pranab Mukherjee on Sunday asked the US investors to access the Indian debt market through a mechanism of regulated entities with a sustained long-term interest rate.
Meeting leaders of Fortune 500 companies in Chicago, he assured them that India has evolved a transparent and stable regulatory regime in sectors such as electricity, telecommunications, ports, airports, petroleum and natural gas, and a regulator for the coal sector is on the anvil.
He pointed out that India has recently liberalised foreign participation in the debt-equity market by allowing foreign investors to directly invest in Indian equity.
Seeking a "greater degree of involvement" of foreign investors, Mukherjee said the "debt requirement for the infrastructure sector is very large".
He said India had recently evolved a mechanism to enable access to the Indian debt market through infrastructure debt funds which will be regulated entities with a sustained long-term interest rate, long horizon entities like pension and infrastructure and insurance funds.
The extent of foreign participation both through debt and equity in the financing of India's infrastructure has been of the order of around 8 to 10 per cent in the recent past.