Guidelines for infrastructure debt fund soon

The government is also working on policy framework for debt market

“We are working on formulating guidelines on IDF. Hopefully by June we will come out the guidelines,” the Secretary, Department of Economic Affairs (DEA), R Gopalan said at an interactive session of CII National Conference & Annual Meet being held here on Saturday.

The government is giving paramount importance on development of infrastructure, funding of which is being pegged at $1 trillion during the 12th Five Year Plan (2012-17), he said.

“Though government will put in its fund for infrastructure major chunk of is expected to come from private sector. In this context the need for infrastructure debt fund is assuming importance,” he said.

“In fact, it is Planning Commission which initially started the work for creating IDF. We in the Finance Ministry want to create the funds,  which are generic in nature. There can be two or three funds. It can also be more than that since our requirement for funding is huge,” Gopalan said.

He also hinted that government was working on policy framework for promotion of infrastructure debt market. Gopalan revealed that the newly created India Infrastructure Finance Company Limited (IIFCL), which seeks to provide long term financial assistance to infrastructure projects, was negotiating with the Asian Development Fund (ADB), to raise its fund base.

Notified IDF

To attract foreign funds for financing of infrastructure the government in the Budget 2011-12 has proposed creation of special vehicles in the form of notified IDF. Detailed modalities for operation of these specific IDFs to tap foreign funds are also being worked out, he said. Participating in the interactive session the Finance Secretary Sushama Nath said primary focus of the government in the current fiscal would be to boost growth momentum while sticking to path of fiscal consolidation.

“Let there be no doubt in any body’s mind. We will do our best to stick to the budgeted fiscal deficit figure, which is pegged at 4.6 per cent of the GDP in 2011-12,” she said.

“We are not going to exceed the target set for the public borrowing for the current fiscal. We are not going to occupy more space in the public borrowing. So the industry should not worry,” she said

“We will also try to contain the subsidy bill as part of our exercise to push forward the ongoing process of fiscal consolidation,” Nath said.

Talking about reforms government proposes to introduce both in the domain of direct and indirect tax through the new Direct Tax Code and GST, Nath indicated during the course of the current fiscal several measures for further simplification of tax rules and procedures would be initiated.