From ministries to markets: Why India needs a sovereign wealth fund

Ministries are designed to set policy, not to run companies or make investment decisions. In today's complex business world, they're simply not equipped to play fund manager

There are reports that India is looking to set up a sovereign wealth fund (SWF). The idea of an SWF isn’t new. The first SWF was created in 1953 by Kuwait to invest its oil wealth for future generations. Since then, two waves of such funds have reshaped how nations manage their assets. The first wave in the 1970s and 1980s came from oil-rich countries like Abu Dhabi and Brunei, seeking to stabilise volatile commodity revenues, and Singapore, aiming to be fiscally prudent by professionalising how government companies were run. The second wave, in the 2000s, was driven by fast-growing,