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IFC to increase exposure in India to $1 b

By Our Special Correspondent

NEW DELHI MAY 1. The International Finance Corporation (IFC), the private sector lending arm of the World Bank, today signed a memorandum of understanding with the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) to promote sustainable private sector development in the country and also announced that its exposure in India would go up by about $300 million within the next two years to cross the $1 billion mark. Since 1956, the IFC has committed financing projects in India amounting to $2.4 billion.

Disclosing this here today, the Executive Vice President of IFC, Peter Woicke, told presspersons that IFC was looking at housing, micro finance, infrastructure and mid-size corporates in the manufacturing sector to increase its exposure which was likely to go up to $1 billion within the next two years.

The exposure could be even higher provided quality investment proposals were presented to the corporation, Mr. Woicke said and added that "if the CII helps us, we would be happy. We would like IFC's exposure in India to go up to even $2 billion.''

IFC's experience in India had been better compared to the rest of the world, Mr. Woicke said and pointed out that while the corporation had to make an average provision of 28 per cent globally for non-performing assets, its provisioning in India had been only 15 per cent.

Talking about the Indian economy, Mr. Woicke, who is also the Managing Director of the World Bank, said the gross domestic product (GDP) here could grow by 5.5 per cent during 2003-04 and India could achieve an even higher growth of 7 to 8 per cent in case reforms were carried out speedily.

Mr. Woicke, who met the Disinvestment Minister, Arun Shourie, also offered assistance in hastening disinvestment process here by helping arrange social security schemes and retraining of laid-off workers in public enterprises.

"The World Bank and the IFC can help the Indian Government in putting in place a social security net and retraining of laid-off staff,'' he said.

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