India, Japan Fund to Finance Clean Energy Firms

New Delhi: Prioritising global challenges like climate change and environment issues, the government said on Wednesday that National Investment and Infrastructure Fund (NIIF) entered into a collaboration with the Japan Bank for International Cooperation (JBIC) to launch a $600 million India-Japan Fund (IJF) with JBIC and Indian government of as anchor investors. This joint initiative, however, signals a key dimension of collaboration between the two countries in these areas.

As per a statement issued by the finance ministry, the announcement marks NIIF’s first bi-lateral fund, with the Centre contributing 49 per cent of the target corpus and the remaining 51 per cent contributed by JBIC. “The fund will be managed by NIIF Limited (NIIFL) and JBIC IG (a subsidiary of JBIC) will support NIIFL in promoting Japanese investments in India,” it said.

India-Japan fund will focus on investing in environmental sustainability and low carbon emission strategies and aims to play the role of being a ‘partner of choice’ to further enhance Japanese investments into India. The setting up of the India-Japan fund represents a key milestone in the strategic and economic partnership between the governments of Japan and India.