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Jaitley woos Canada’s investors with India’s ‘attractive regime’
TORONTO: Finance minister Arun Jaitley is confident that investment flows from Canada will increase in the near future as India offers investors an “attractive regime”.
TORONTO: Finance minister Arun Jaitley is confident that investment flows from Canada will increase in the near future as India offers investors an “attractive regime”.
Jaitley met his Canadian counterpart Bill Morneau and the country’s minister of international trade Chrystia Freeland on Monday, and also held a series of meetings with major investors, including the Canadian Pension Plan (CPP) Investment Board.
New Delhi needs immediate investments of at least $1 trillion to build roads, ports, airports and power stations as it seeks to expand its economy and raise living standards. The government hopes private companies will contribute half the amount.
But so far it has struggled to raise enough private money, with at least $10 billion worth of road projects stuck because of difficulty in obtaining land. Many power projects remain unfinished owing to regulatory delays.
Canada is only the latest stop on Jaitley’s campaign to raise investments from global cash cows.
After the meetings in Toronto, Jaitley was upbeat about the prospects of Canadian investors upping their stake in India: “They all look at policy, they look at prospects, they look at the risks involved, and then collectively they weigh that and then they see comparable economies, as to what are the other options they have. And from all counts, India rates fairly high on their priorities.”
The CPP Fund, for instance, controls nearly US $225 billion and it hosted a meeting for the finance minister. He pointed out that in the past 24 months or so, Canadian investors, including pension funds, have invested nearly $12 billion in India.
“These funds have a lot of investible surplus and therefore, they have to look at a wider canvas of targets where they want to invest, particularly because of the returns they get in our part of the world, are much higher than what they will get here,” Jaitley said.
