India bright...

India’s retail inflation rose to 4.87% in May but is still within the Reserve Bank of India’s comfort level. The NDA has come under fire for not reducing the tax component of fuel prices which rose in tandem with global oil prices. Hindustan Times learns that the Modi government did consider doing this but decided against it because it could hurt the country’s financial situation, and possibly affect its credit rating.

Sure enough, on Wednesday, Modi spoke about India’s ratings upgrade; in November, Moody’s Investor Services increased India’s sovereign rating for the first time in 14 years.

In his speech at the AIIB meeting, the PM asked the bank to expand its financing to $40 billion by 2020 and $100 billion by 2025 from the current $4 billion.

The AIIB is a multilateral development bank that aims to support the building of infrastructure in the Asia-pacific region.

India will require $4.5 trillion of investment in infrastructure over the next 25 years, this year’s Economic Survey said. Some of that money will have to come from multilateral institutions and Modi made a pitch for that on Wednesday.

“In India, we are applying novel Public Private Partnership models, infrastructure debt funds, and infrastructure investment trusts to fund infrastructure projects. India is trying to develop brown-field assets as a separate asset class for infrastructure investment. Such assets having passed the stages of land acquisition and environment clearances are relatively