Upbeat about India’s economic growth potential, Japanese government-sponsored fund JOIN said on Tuesday that it is keen on exploring investment opportunities in the country’s infrastructure space.

After meeting Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, Japan Overseas Infrastructure Investment Corporation (JOIN) CEO Takuma Hatano said the National Investment and Infrastructure Fund (NIIF) would play a very important role in India’s infrastructure development.

“We should consider how we could work together with NIIF, namely, what we needed firstlis to find the good candidate project. Then we could work together based on a particular project,” Hatano said when asked if JOIN is exploring investment opportunities in NIIF.

He said Japanese institutions are looking at government-backed institutions like the NIIF to park their funds. The government holds 49 per cent in NIIF and is looking for investors for the remaining stake in the ₹40,000-crore fund. JOIN, Hatano said, recently met IDFC and other Indian companies.

“Of course, India’s macroeconomic performance is very excellent, but when it comes to private investment from Japan to infrastructure, this is one of the very challenging investments,” he said.

Stating that infrastructure investment takes a long time to give returns, he said, this is the right time to make Japanese investments in India.

JOIN supports building infrastructure through (public-private partnership (PPP) arrangements. It works in collaboration with Japanese companies, banks, institutions (JICA, JBIC, and NEXI, among others) and the government.

Earlier in the day, Jaitley also met Government Pension Investment Fund President Norihiro Takahashi and assured of good returns on investments in India.

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