'Scope for foreign investment in Indian infrastructure'

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New York, May 15: : Foreign entrepreneurs can invest profitably in development of infrastructure in India, which the government plans to enhance a big way over the next several years, top Indian officials attending an investment forum here have said.

In their presentations, but mostly during one-on-one meetings with investors, they explained that India needed huge investment and the private sector has a major role to play on its own as also in association with the government.

Over the next five years, India would need USD 500 billion dollars in infrastructure to ensure that it is able to sustain its fast growing economy and the government alone cannot find this type of money, they emphasised.

In his presentation, Power Secretary Anil Razdan said opportunity for investments exists in all aspects of development in this sector -- production, transmission, distribution and cutting down transmission losses.

As India expands its power production as also distribution, it would need a lot of equipment including transformers and hence the manufacturers would have a lot of opportunities too, he told the investors attending the forum yesterday.

He also spoke about India's efforts to go in for clean coal technology and alternative sources of energy, the areas in which foreign investors could play a major role.

A report released on the occasion said that the infrastructure sector is being paid maximum attention by the government to ensure that supply shortages do not trigger runaway inflation.

"At present, it offers significant opportunities to private investors, both domestic and foreign," it said. "The notion that only government can and should provide all public infrastructure service has been gradually abandoned in India over the course of past decade," Managing Director of IDFC Rajiv Lall said in his foreword.

With private sector participation in telecom, roads, ports, civil aviation and airports leading visible improvements in service quality, time and cost, there is growing acknowledgement of the benefits that private sector bring to infrastructure sector, he told the investors.

The government, Lall emphasised, hopes to harness the private sector's efficiencies to a much greater extent in meeting India's infrastructure needs either through fully private ventures or through public private partnership (PPP).

Surveys, he said, have shown that the poor are willing to pay for quality public service, for at present they end up paying more than the rich for access to basic services which are substandard.