UAE government plans to invest $1 b in infra fund

Abu Dhabi Investment Authority (ADIA) will be investing $1 billion in the National Investment and Infrastructure Fund (NIIF) to boost country’s infrastructure.

The Centre had set up NIIF with the hopes of attracting investments from both domestic and international sources for infrastructure development in commercially viable projects.

The proposed corpus of NIIF is `40,000 crores (around $6 billion). The Centre’s contribution to the NIIF shall be 49 per cent of the total commitment at any given point of time. NIIF has been mandated to solicit equity participation from strategic anchor partners, like overseas sovereign/quasi-sovereign/multilateral/bilateral investors. NIIF was envisaged to be established as one or more Alternative Investment Funds (AIFs) under Sebi norms.

“Pursuant to the memorandum of understanding (MoU) between department of economic affairs and the government of United Arab Emirates (UAE) to mobilise longterm investment into NIIF, the first investment agreement between NIIF Master Fund and a wholly owned subsidiary of Abu Dhabi Investment Authority (ADIA) has been signed today. The investment from ADIA Group would be $ 1 billion,” said finance ministry.

ADIA will become the first institutional investor in NIIF’s master fund and a shareholder in the NIIF’s investment management company.

“This is a significant milestone in operationalisation of NIIF. This Agreement paves the way for creating significant economic impact through investment in commercially viable infrastructure development projects,” said secretary economic affairs, Subhash Chandra Garg.