The Hindu Business Line : IFC bullish on emerging markets

The CII Capital Market Summit is underway in Mumbai and IFC has a debt and equity portfolio of about $1.4 billion in the Indian market. On the sidelines of the meet, Mr Iyad Malas, South Asia Director at IFC (International Finance Corporation), said that they have increased exposure to India significantly over the last two years. Mr Malas also informs that they have invested $400 million in India last year.

Mr Malas likes infrastructure and financial services sector. He also says that IT, pharma and biotechnology, textiles and auto are other sectors where investments could be made. Mr Malas believes that growth in emerging markets like India and China would continue to be high. Excerpts from CNBC-TV18's exclusive interview with Mr Iyad Malas:

What are the sectors that look good to you in India at this point of time. What are the sectors that you have invested in already? Would you maintain your call on those sectors?

I have been in India for the last 50 years. In fact, this year is our 50th anniversary. We take a very long-term perspective on any market. We have increased our activities in India substantially over the last couple of years. Last year, which ended in June, we have made an additional investment of $400 million.

The priority sectors remain to be the same. In fact, we are expanding our coverage into many other sectors. But primarily, infrastructure remains the sector, which interests us, where there are huge financing requirements.

The other sector that we are looking at actively is in the financial services sector. There is a huge demand for capital on the part of banks and we will be supporting banks possibly through equity investments. The other sector, where we see lot of potential on a longer-term basis is in the agri-business. We are working on couple of transactions, which we are hoping to close in the next month or so. The other area is industrial sector, where many large companies in India are making large capital investments and we are working with them. We are looking at sectors like automotive components, pharma, biotech, IT services and more recently, we are looking at the textile sector.

A lot of people, over the past two months, have been saying that they want to pare down their exposure to emerging markets. What is your call on emerging markets?

We focus much on emerging markets. All of our work is in emerging markets, we really do not work in other markets. We continue to feel that growth will be higher in emerging markets

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