Prime Minister Narendra Modi is set to meet 15 of the world’s largest funds to promote investments in capital-starved sectors like infrastructure. The main purpose of the meeting is to assess their views on reforms that are required to attract long-term capital into the country.
The development comes at a time when capital expenditure has seen a significant fall in view of the Covid-19 pandemic, with companies going slow on their new projects.
“Fund houses from all over the world are in touch with us and want us to provide good assets and required patient capital (long-term capital) with not a very high, but stable returns. We are working towards it,” Tarun Bajaj, secretary, Department of Economic Affairs (DEA), said at a virtual conference organised by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) on Wednesday.
Industry experts welcomed the development. CII Director General Chandrajit Banerjee said the meeting with global investors would be a confidence booster as it signalled a high degree of commitment from the prime minister himself. “This is a good signal for foreign funds to be invested and interested in the India story,” he added.
Banerjee said that apart from infrastructure, health care and digital space were among the areas that had huge scope for foreign investments.
Fund managers, too, see this meeting as an opportunity to fill the gap that has been created amid issues concerning China.