The much-touted India Infrastructure Fund set up to finance major road, port and power projects has so far garnered $855 million in multiple closures over a period of six months, a top IDFC official said.
The $855 million would form a part of $2 billion equity of the $5 billion infrastructure initiative launched in early 2007, IDFC Project Equity Company's Principal Aditya S Aggarwal told PTI.
Originally, $2 billion is raised as equity and $3 billion as long-term debt by India Infrastructure Finance Company (IIFCL) for financing infrastructure development in the country.
So far, $855 million has been invested to acquire 26-49 per cent stake holding by IDFC Project Equity in five domestic infrastructure projects, Aggarwal said.
IDFC Project Equity, Citi Group, Global Private Equity Fund Blackstone and Indian government had jointly launched the $5 billion Infrastructure initiative in February, 2007 with an initial corpus of around $250 million.
The fund later received equity investments from above 10 domestic and international investors to fill up the $2 billion equity component, Aggarwal said.
The fund managers expect to close India Infrastructure Fund, which has initially targeted $1.25 billion, over the next six months, Aggarwal said.
The fund mangers have also plans to list the Infrastructure Fund over a period of five years as and when it receives the regulatory consensus and approvals from the fund's limited partners, Aggarwal said.
The global credit crunch has impacted the availability of funds for domestic infrastructure projects but is unlikely to impact in a bigger way, Aggarwal said.
“We see negligible impact if at all on the fundamental attractiveness of Indian infrastructure investments. We do not foresee any significant contraction of demand… However the availability of funds has come down in the recent period following the global credit crunch,” Aggarwal said.
According to government estimates, over $550 billion will be required for financing the infrastructure projects in India by 2012.
Source: Business Standard