Plan panel asks SBI to anchor infra debt fund

The Planning Commission is in talks with State Bank of India (SBI), the country’s largest lender, to anchor its $11-billion infrastructure fund. It is also having internal consultations with the finance ministry on the same issue.

“We have asked O P Bhatt (SBI chairman) to assign people to look at the proposal on key issues. We are also talking to the finance ministry. The decision on this will happen in a couple of months,” Planning Commission Deputy Chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia said on the sidelines of an event organised by Skoch Consultancy Services here today.

He added that regulatory relaxations were needed for such funds like taking out financing from short term to long term and external financing not to be used for refinancing.

“This will not be a government fund but will be innovative financing. We need such long-term debt funds and the Finance Commission will be guided by the finance ministry,” Ahluwalia added.

SBI is already working on setting up a $3-billion (around Rs 13,500 crore) infrastructure fund with Macquarie and International Finance Corporation.

Earlier, a panel set up by the Planning Commission had recommended setting up an $11-billion infrastructure fund to build ports, roads, airports and telecommunication networks.

“We are certainly behind our targets as far as the power sector is concerned but we will meet the target of adding 62 Gigawatts over five years to March 2012,” he said.

On the country’s performance in the 11th plan period, he said 9-10 per cent of the gross domestic product (GDP) had been spent on infrastructure and that needs to increase in the next Plan period. He also emphasised that to improve the energy efficiency of the infrastructure, a shift is required from roads to the railways and that requires modernisation of the railways.

Planning Commission member B K Chaturvedi, who was also present at the event said: “We are spending 7.5 per cent of our GDP on infrastructure and the share of the private sector in this is 2.77 per cent.

In the terminal year of the plan (2012), we expect the public sector share to stand at 5 per cent, while that of the private sector at 3.3 per cent.”