Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on November 6, 2019, announced that the Cabinet has cleared a proposal to set up an alternative investment fund to provide priority debt financing for the completion of stalled housing projects.
The ₹25,000-crore alternative investment fund (AIF) for the real estate sector announced last month by the central government has raised ₹10,530 crore in its first round.
As part of the approved measure, the government had said it would pump in ₹10,000 crore into the AIF. (Representational image)(HT file)
SBICAP Ventures Ltd, the investment manager of the fund, announced in a statement that the Special Window for Affordable and Mid-Income Housing (SWAMIH) Investment Fund I attracted interest from investors like State Bank of India (SBI), Life Insurance Corporation of India (LIC), Housing Development Finance Corp. Ltd (HDFC) and major public sector banks.
SBICAP Ventures in the statement said the capital provided by the fund will help struggling homebuyers get home, free locked-up capital in these projects, provide employment and increase demand for construction sector commodities, thereby providing a boost to economic growth.
Sanjiv Chadha, chairman at SBICAP Ventures, said the fund has made remarkable progress since its announcement. “We have substantially completed the fundraising, have scaled up the team, formed the investment committee and have begun examining potential investment opportunities.”
On November 6, 2019, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman announced that the Cabinet has cleared a proposal to set up an AIF to provide priority debt financing for the completion of stalled housing projects that are in the affordable and middle-income housing sector.
As part of the approved measure, the government had said it would pump in ₹10,000 crore into the AIF. Additional investments were supposed to be brought in by institutional and private investors to generate a total corpus of ₹25,000 crore.