Date:22/03/2006 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2006/03/22/stories/2006032210181800.htm

Business

IDFC, Feedback Ventures launch `3I' scheme

Special Correspondent

An initial corpus of Rs. 10 cr. is set apart for the new initiatives

NEW DELHI: Infrastructure Development Finance Company Ltd. (IDFC) and Feedback Ventures (FV) on Tuesday came out with a new scheme called "India Infrastructure Initiative (III or 3I)" to promote projects for public-private partnerships.

"The association with Feedback Ventures (FV) will extend us deep domain knowledge of the sector as they have over 400 professional engineers for infrastructure development. 3I would address all possible links in the sector," IDFC Chairman Deepak Parekh told media persons on the occasion of the launch of the joint initiative.

An initial corpus of Rs. 10 crore has been set apart for the new initiative for developing a stream of bankable infrastructure projects, on behalf of government agencies, by bringing together the financial expertise and domain knowledge of IDFC with project creation skills of FV, Managing Director and CEO IDFC Rajiv Lall said.

The preliminary and pre-operative costs would initially be met from the corpus and these would be subsequently recovered from the winning bidder with an agreed administrative mark-up, which would be decided case-by-case and be part of the announced bid conditions. The costs thus recovered would go to make 3I a "revolving facility" so that the corpus grows.

IDFC on Tuesday indicated that it would hike lending rates by 50 to 100 basis points by April 1. Mr. Parekh said, "Due to the liquidity crisis, we will hike (rates) between half percentage point to one percentage point by April 1. We might reverse it when the liquidity crisis gets over.''