India offers exciting investment opportunities in infra: FM

Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee today invited US investments in the infrastructure sector while admitting the present facilities were insufficient to sustain high growth in the country.

The current level of infrastructure facilities are not sufficient to sustain high growth and scope of improvement in core sector also provides opportunities for global investors, Mukherjee said at a CII seminar here.

The Finance Minister told US business leaders that India offered exciting opportunities in fields of power,road and ports

"India presents exciting opportunity for global investors. The recovery of the benchmark market indices of India over the last two years has been quite rapid and supports this assessment," he said at a seminar titled India-US: An agenda for co-creation.

The fast growth of the economy in recent years had placed an increasing stress on physical infrastructure, Mukherjee said.

He said areas such as electricity, railway, road, ports, airports, irrigation, urban and rural water supply and sanitation suffered from a substantial capacity deficit.

The finance minister said the foreign direct investment flows into the country has also been quite robust in the last two years, despite the general decline in global capital flows.

Mukherjee said it is essential to source more and more funds from the private sector to sustain the high growth in infrastructure spending.

"The extent of foreign participation-both through debt and equity-- in the financing of India's infrastructure has been of the order of the 8-10 per cent in the recent past.

"Going forward, I expect a much greater degree of involvement of foreign investors in this sector," he said.

The Finance Minister said the challenge of financial inclusion in India provides an opportunity to the US companies.

"Financial inclusion is a key determinant of sustainable and inclusive growth... There are several areas where US companies can play a role in delivering financial inclusion," he said.

India attracted 8.9 billion dollars FDI inflow during April-August, 2010.