NEW DELHI—India's trade minister Tuesday proposed setting up a revolving fund of $9 billion jointly with Japan to help finance an industrial link, a move that highlights a growing intent to fix the country's shabby infrastructure, which often hurts growth in Asia's third-largest economy.
Anand Sharma, currently in Japan to sign an economic co-operation pact, met Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan and informed him of the current status of the industrial and transport link between New Delhi and India's financial capital Mumbai.
The Delhi-Mumbai Industrial Corridor project, which started in 2007, is financed by the Indian government, Yen loans from Japan and investment from Japanese companies.
The project, modeled along the Tokyo-Osaka industrial corridor, is proposed to include a high-speed rail freight corridor, new power capacity of 4,000 megawatts, three new sea ports and six airports. India also plans to upgrade existing industrial units, build 12 new industrial clusters, 10 logistic parks and agricultural hubs alongside the industrial corridor.
The DMIC's first phase is scheduled to be ready by 2012 and is expected to boost the economy in a country where, economists widely believe, creaky infrastructure takes 2% off annual growth.
Mr. Sharma, who expects the project to attract more than $100 billion in investments, urged Japanese companies to invest in capital goods such as power equipment.
India is increasingly relying on private and overseas investment to develop its infrastructure as it aims to spend $1 trillion between 2012 and 2017 to lay new roads and build airports.
Investments in the country's roads, bridges and power plants are so far mostly funded out of local savings, which hover around 35% of gross domestic product.
However, India has struggled to attract long-term capital, which is key to infrastructure project financing, as bureaucratic red-tape, a shallow local bond market and faulty project designs have often thwarted overseas investors from committing money that won't promise returns in a decade.
Indian pension and insurance companies can't directly invest in infrastructure projects under current regulations, limiting crucial funding. In the current five-year plan to March 31, 2012, such funds are likely to contribute less than 7% to the total investment in projects.
Insurance and pension funds elsewhere are key buyers of long-term infrastructure bonds.