Tuesday, January 13, 2009

PPP projects faces liquidity crunch

Despite the Finance Ministry ingECB norms recently, along with allowing IIFCL to raise Rs 30,000 crore through tax-free bonds, the fund raising for infrastructure projects seems to be difficult. Arvind Mayaram additional secretary & FA in the ministry of rural development says "that in the present scenario in India’s PPP projects still present the most attractive channel equally for equity investors and lenders.There is money out there. What is required is to convince the investors and the lenders that PPP projects are a great opportunity for them."
He further says even though the impact of slowdown has made raising money a difficult exercise but still PPP projects have three factors in India which make it a relatively safe investment vehicle.
  1. Efficient price discovery through competitive bidding process.
  2. Transferring commercial risk to public sector.
  3. Viability gap funding in case of an unviable projects.

More details can be seen here.