State Bank, Macquarie plan India infrastructure fund
MUMBAI, April 16 (Reuters) - State Bank of India (SBI.BO), India's largest lender, and Australia's Macquarie MCQ.AX plan to jointly raise a $2 billion fund to invest in infrastructure projects in India, the two firms said on Wednesday.
International Finance Corp, the private sector lending arm of the World Bank and the two firms will contribute $450 million in anchor investments for the fund, State Bank and Macquarie said in a joint statement.
Potential projects have been identified and the fund will be launched in the second quarter of 2008, the statement added.
"The Indian economy is expected to grow at 8-to-9 per cent for the coming few years and ..... we expect the infrastructure spend of the country to reach $1 trillion in the next decade," Deepak Chawla, a deputy managing director at State Bank, said.
The Indian government estimates about $500 billion will be needed to build new roads, ports, airports and power plants by 2012 to keep pace with Asia's third-largest economy which has been growing at an average of 8.8 percent over the last four years. (Reporting by Narayanan Somasundaram)
