NIIF plans $ 5 bn master fund to oil infra sector wheel

To bring long-term equity capital into infrastructure sector, the National Investment and Infrastructure Fund (NIIF) is looking at creating a USD 5 billion master fund, a top company official said.
Capital, which will come into the infrastructure sector through this fund, will stay for a longer period of time.
"We are in the process of raising an NIIF Master Fund, where we will put together amount USD 5 billion of equity capital that will be available for investing in infra sector in the country," NIIF chief executive Sujoy Bose said at a capital markets event organised by Ficci today.
The proposed fund, which will have a combination of international as well as domestic investors, is going to be of 15 years and will be denominated in the rupees.

"We are well in advance with this fund raise and hope to announce that fund soon," he said.
Besides a master fund, NIIF, which is the country's first quasi sovereign wealth fund, is also creating a fund of funds, where it will anchor fund manager and help them raise capital to create fund management institutions that can grow overtime.

"He said there are very strong fund management companies in the country that have evolved over the past couple of decades. But right now in the infra sector, there has been a bit of a slowdown in fund raising and we want to support these managers and create new managers as we believe creating a universe of local fund managers is very critical for the development of the sector," he said adding that NIIF will also anchor green project fund, which will focus on renewable energy sector.

Addressing the same event, Neeraj Kumar Gupta, secretary of department of investment and public asset management, said government has announced a time bound listing of CPSEs.
"Almost a dozen of CPSEs are in the process of entering the market at appropriate time. Commitment to list them is visible. Several state-run firms in defence, railways and insurance sectors are all entering the market."
He also noted that the government has suggested strategic sales in several companies, saying that these companies require investment or technology, which can be effectively provided by private players, which will help them grow further.