Govt-owned NaBFID plans to increase headcount to 150 by end of FY24

MD Rai says it will venture into rating banks and instruments by December

The government-backed National Bank for Financing Infrastructure Development (NaBFID) will increase its head count, including domain experts, from 30 at present to 150  by the end of financial year 2023-24 (FY24).

The staff strength will increase to 50 in a month, said Rajkiran Rai G, NaBFID’s managing director and chief executive officer.

Rai said the organisation would have a lean structure. The top deck would consist of a managing director, and there would be three deputy managing directors, who would look after functions like credit risk, monitoring, and treasury. The deputy MD for credit risk has already been hired.

NaBFID was set up as a development finance institution (DFI) to provide long-term infrastructure finance. It is regulated and supervised as an all-India financial institution by the Reserve Bank of India. It is the fifth such institution after the EXIM Bank, National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD), National Housing Bank (NHB), and Small Industries Development Bank of India (SIDBI).

The financial institution plans to disburse its maiden loan in FY23, and it may raise funds from the bond market before the fiscal ends.

Rai said it would venture into ratings of banks and instruments by December. It will look at raising long-term liabilities through bond issuances with tenors of up to 25 years. It would tap pension funds and insurers, who have an investible corpus of Rs 2.5 trillion. Besides, it may also look at multilateral agencies.

At present, the institution is not short of resources — the government has provided it with Rs 20,000 crore in capital and Rs 5,000 crore in grants.

NaBFID’s mandate is not limited to financing projects alone. It will also engage in development of the infrastructure finance ecosystem by helping crowd-in investments.