Finance Ministry launches country’s first IDF

06 Mar 2012 Evaluate

An infrastructure development fund (IDF) has been set up jointly by four banking and financial giants namely ICICI, Bank of Baroda, Citicorp Finance India (Citigroup) and Life Insurance Corporation of India (LIC). The IDF which has been set up as a non-banking finance company (NBFC) is aimed at catering to the special long term needs of the infrastructure sector.

The IDF will have an equity capital of Rs 300 crores with the option of raising an equal amount of tier-II capital through instruments such as bonds. While serving as a catalyst to channelise domestic savings and global liquidity, the fund will attempt to attract capital from local and international investors. It will invest in projects which are already under implementation and have completed at least one year of operations.

ICICI Bank (together with a wholly-owned subsidiary) will hold 31%, while Bank of Baroda, Citicorp and LIC are to take 30%, 29% and 10% respectively in the fund. Taking into account Tier-II capital and the ability to borrow, it can raise about $2 billion. The fund will seek to raise debt capital from domestic and foreign resources in the form of long-term pension, insurance funds and sovereign wealth funds. It is expected to start operations in FY’13.

As per the FM, India needs investments to the tune of $1 trillion to meet its infrastructure requirements in the next five years. 50% of this is expected to come from the private sector in terms of public private partnership (PPP). In the last budget, Mukherjee had announced the reduction of withholding tax on interest payments on borrowings by the IDFs from 20% to 5% to attract offshore funds into IDFs.

It has been felt that banks alone cannot meet the requirements of the infrastructure sector given the long gestation periods Involved. Hence an appropriate body needs to be created for the same. An announcement to create IDFs was made by the Finance Minister, Pranab Mukherjee in his last budget in February 2011 and the framework for the same was announced by the finance ministry in June 2011. RBI issued the regulations for IDFs to be set up as a NBFC in November, 2011 while SEBI issued regulations governing an IDF structured as a mutual fund in August, 2011.

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