Funds favour India for returns; not China's Belt-and-Road project

Some of Asia’s biggest infrastructure investors are seeing plenty of opportunities in India. In China’s mammoth Belt-and-Road initiative, however, not so much.

India is a key market for Macquarie Group thanks to strong economic growth and state asset sales, said Frank Kwok, co-head of Asia Pacific at Macquarie Infrastructure & Real Assets. Hence its recent purchase of nine toll-roads with charges indexed to inflation.

China’s Belt-and-Road, however is more driven by geopolitics than investment returns, he said at the Bloomberg Invest Australia summit in Sydney on Wednesday.

“It’s very much a China-led initiative, but really it’s about the entire region,” said Kwok. “But