The Finance Ministry has said that the guidelines for infrastructure debt funds would be released by end June.
The establishment of infrastructure debt funds is expected to help meet the infrastructure financing requirement of over $1 trillion during the 12{+t}{+h} Plan Period (2012-17).
“We are hoping to get it (guidelines for infra debt fund) out by the end of first quarter… by June this year,” Mr R. Gopalan, Economic Affairs Secretary in the Finance Ministry told reporters on the sidelines of a CII-Exim Bank event here on Monday.
The Finance Minister, Mr Pranab Mukherjee had in his recent budget speech announced that Government intends to help create special purpose vehicles in the form of notified infrastructure debt funds so as to attract foreign funds for financing of infrastructure sector.
In June 2010, an expert panel headed by HDFC Chairman Mr Deepak Parekh had recommended creation of infrastructure debt fund with a corpus of Rs 50,000 crore to meet the financing needs of infrastructure sector.
Meanwhile, Mr Gopalan told reporters that the issue of changing the definition of infrastructure would soon be taken up by a committee of secretaries. Retail, real estate and health are among the sectors that are looking for an infrastructure tag.
On the issue of guidelines for awarding bank licences to more private sector players, Mr Gopalan said that he expects the RBI to issue the guidelines before the end of this month (in the next few days)