Foreign Investment in India Infra: NIIF CEO on Opportunities

New Delhi, May 11 (PTI) Foreign investors are exploring co-investment opportunities in India's infrastructure sector with certain governance rights, and the National Investment and Infrastructure Fund (NIIF) is working with regulators to align their requirements with those of other investors, a senior official said on Monday.

National Investment and Infrastructure Fund, MD & CEO, Sanjiv Aggarwal, also said that international investors usually budget for 2-3 per cent annual depreciation in rupee over the long term and want a product which could hedge the dollar-rupee risk.

Addressing the CII Annual Business Summit, Aggarwal said infrastructure sectors in India offer tremendous opportunity and see very significant interest from international investors.

"They want to come in. It is now for us to form good partnerships with them, offer them opportunities to deploy capital at scale," Aggarwal said.


Participating in a discussion titled "The Future of Financing', he said these "sophisticated investors want co-investment to come with certain governance rights".

"Which is something that we are working on. We are working alongside the regulators to align their needs and those of the other investors," Aggarwal said.

Talking about currency risks vis-a-vis foreign investor interest, Aggarwal said it is not as if international pension funds, which are sophisticated investors, are not really worried about the depreciation of the rupee.

"International investors are comfortable budgeting in 2-3 per cent annual depreciation of the rupee over a long-term period... But it has brought forth a conversation about how to hedge the dollar-rupee risk. And we are now getting asked by large companies, our companies, to develop a strategy for giving them a hedged product. That is something we are working on," he said.

NIIF is a sovereign-backed entity established in 2015 to act as a collaborative investment platform for international and domestic investors.