The Tamil Nadu Infrastructure Development Board plans to raise funds from international financial institutions from later this year to support the state’s massive capital expenditure of $250 billion involving 217 projects to be implemented over the next 12 years, a top banking executive tracking the developments said.
Approvals are being sought from authorities in India including the Security and Exchange Board of India to work out arrangements for raising funds, which will support the investment programme under the Tamil Nadu Vision 2023, the executive said.
Initially the board would raise $1 billion over three years through a new entity called Tamil Nadu Infrastructure Fund Management Company which will be formed within the next two months, the executive told fii-news.com.
There is an urgent and pressing need to proceed with raising funds as work has already commenced on 64 of the 217 projects. The state officials are also undertaking detailed feasibility studies and preparing bid documents for rest of the projects, said the executive.
The board is also exploring other options to raise finances such as debt funds, mutual funds and infrastructure investment funds.
The fund raising momentum will pick up by May when the state will host Global Investors’ Meet, or GIM. Dozens of International investors have been invited to the GIM on May 23-24 in Chennai for detailed discussions on the state’s development plans.
The state administrators have set a $16 billion fund raising target from GIM and has already secured a commitment of $4 billion from February 2015 trade promotion visits to Japan, South Korea, Singapore and Malaysia, he said.
The second phase of the Tamil Nadu Vision 2023 Document was unveiled by the then Chief Minister Jayalalithaa Jayaram in February 2014 and contains reports on the sector specific approach. It also contains profiles of infrastructure projects that are proposed to be implemented in the identified sectors. The first part was released in March 2012 and covers profiles of the aforementioned 217 infrastructure projects in six major sectors – energy, transport, industrial and commercial infrastructure, urban infrastructure and services, agriculture and human development.