India’s SREI enters to finance infra projects
India’s SREI Infrastructure Finance Ltd. entered into a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with its local partner, Arinma Holdings (Pvt.) Ltd. yesterday.
SREI, through its collaboration with Arinma, will be looking to develop business opportunities in areas such as infrastructure project finance, advisory services and equipment finance.
“We believe that bringing SREI into Sri Lanka will create a platform for both the private and public sectors in Sri Lanka to access sophisticated advisory services. SREI will bring in a role of project advisory project structuring on public-private partnerships, transaction advisory, financial advisory, project development and management for the first time in Sri Lanka,” Arinma Holdings (Pvt.) Ltd. Chairman Ashan Malalasekera said.
Whilst SREI operates across a wide variety of fields, including financial planning, debt and equity financing as well as legal and administrative services and bid process management, SREI Infrastructure Advisory Group CEO Dr. R. Mandal stated that the company’s initial focus will be in the infrastructure and construction fields over the short to medium term.
“We’ve wanted to start up construction projects in Sri Lanka for a while now and discussions are ongoing at the highest levels but we can’t really disclose any information yet. We’ve been looking at getting involved in Sri Lanka for maybe the last three years although at the moment nothing has materialized yet,” Dr. Mandal said.
“With the slowdown in the Indian economy, investors there are now looking at neighboring countries and Sri Lanka is attracting a lot of interest,” he added.
Dr. Mandal further stated that infrastructure development in the North and East would be an area of particular interest for the SREI going forward.
SREI BNP Paribas is a 50-50 joint venture between SREI Infrastructure Finance and BNP Paribas Leasing Solutions.
SREI made headlines more recently when ICICI Bank sold its total 4,300 million Indian rupees worth of exposure in the cash strapped Kingfisher Airlines, to SREI earlier in July of this year.