India’s state-backed infrastructure financier NaBFID is planning to raise up to $4 billion through external commercial borrowings to bolster long-term infrastructure projects, amid calls for increased investment to meet the country’s ambitious growth targets.
NaBFID is preparing to tap overseas markets for $3 billion to $4 billion through external commercial borrowings, a senior official said on Wednesday, as India’s state-backed infrastructure financier looks to widen its funding base for long-term projects. Rajkiran Rai G, the managing director, said the lender has already arranged $850 million and is considering a bond sale of $500 million to $1 billion, with a maturity of about 10 years.
The proposed issue could come by the end of September, depending on investor demand, Rai said on the sidelines of the FIBAC 2026 conference. According to Business Standard, NaBFID had earlier been working on its first overseas fundraising and had been targeting at least $250 million in external commercial borrowing, with a tenor of three to five years.
Rai also used the event to argue that India must sharply lift infrastructure spending if it wants to meet its longer-term growth goals. He said the country currently invests about ₹20 lakh crore a year in infrastructure, but that figure would need to double to roughly ₹40 lakh crore annually over the next two decades to support an economy of around $30 trillion. CRISIL has separately projected that infrastructure spending will roughly double between fiscal 2024 and fiscal 2030, while Union minister Mansukh Mandaviya has said the annual public infrastructure outlay would need to rise to ₹15 lakh crore to help achieve the Viksit Bharat 2047 target.
Rai said the financing challenge will increasingly depend on drawing in domestic long-term savings, particularly from pension, insurance and provident fund pools. He said those assets total about ₹125 lakh crore, or nearly half of scheduled bank deposits, and are growing faster than bank liabilities. In his view, that makes them a natural source of capital for infrastructure, provided regulators and market structures evolve to support more project origination and distribution rather than leaving banks to carry the risk on their own.
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