India expects $12-13 bn infra investment: Official

India expects investment of up to $13 billion in infrastructure through the National Investment and Infrastructure Fund (NIIF), even as the government seeks to monetise older assets built through public money for undertaking new projects, a senior official said on Tuesday.

Speaking at an event here, Economic Affairs Secretary S.C. Garg also cited the example of the national carrier Air India, where the government is in the process of selling its stake to the private sector.

"We have established NIIF. That is our first experience in trying to use the sovereign wealth. We put out $3 billion in the NIIF.

"We would raise the equal or higher amount from other participants, sovereign wealth funds, pension funds, other private sector participants to raise a corpus of about $7-8 billion, and then the co-investment will also come in.

"So we expect about A$12-13 billion in investments in infrastructure mobilised through NIIF," he said.

Citing the government's decision to divest from Air India, Garg said: "Lot of public assets which are yielding regular kind of return, it is possible to free up invested resources thereby converting them using the InVit (Infrastructure Investment Trust) model so matured assets can be transfered to trusts."

The government is looking at newer ways of financing infrastructure, he said.

"So how do we get them interested to invest, and therefore we are looking at a number of ways, policy on permitting FPIs (foreign portfolio investors), policy on AIF (Alternative Investment Funds). In short, in financing, these are the major issues and developments," he said.

--IANS

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