Govt targets $4.5 trillion infra investment

According to the finance minister Piyush Goyal, India needs a whopping investment of $4.5 trillion in the country’s infrastructure sector in the next one decade and generating the staggering sum will be a challenge but the required finance will not be "deterrence" for the country. He said this at a panel of governors at the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank's (AIIB) two-day annual summit in Delhi. However, in the comments that come amid rising interest rates globally, led by hardening of rates in the US, as also domestically. Capacity building to handle big infra projects is also a challenge and hoped that the multilateral institutions like the AIIB will help in both the challenges. However, Singaporean lender DBS chief executive Piyush Gupta said finding finance for infrastructure is not easy as banks, which have traditionally financed infra, have a limited capacity, making bond markets the go-to platform for raising the resources. But even the bond markets also have their own challenges in supporting green field projects and tend to keep away in the initial years, which are critical for a project, he claimed.