European Investment Bank pledges €300 million for Bengaluru Suburban Railway, eyes more investments in India

The European Investment Bank (EIB) has pledged close to €300 million in external funding for the Bengaluru Suburban Railway project. In an interview with CNBC-TV18, EIB Vice-President Nicola Beer noted that India would continue to see annual investments of around €500 million, driven by emerging opportunities in green energy and urban development across the country.

Below are the excerpts of the interview.

Q: If I were to ask you about the total investments that the EU Investment Bank has made in India so far, what would be the total amount?

Beer: The total amount in the last 20 years we have invested here in India is about €5 billion. This is a huge amount. And we see that regularly we have around €500 million as an investment per year. I would expect that to continue.Q: Which would be the areas which you’re most interested in, if there were certain areas that the EU Investment Bank is bullish about in India, would like to invest in heavily, what would those be?

Beer: In India, the European Investment Bank is very bullish on metro lines and railways. We are transport and mobility experts, but we are also invested heavily in green energy and access to water and water treatment.

If I look a little bit at the development here in India, especially the fast-growing cities, I think this connects very well with the development of sustainable cities, so urbanisation is a topic—water, electricity, but also housing, and of course, the question of how to connect all this together in a coherent picture can be something we may be interested in.

Q: Give us also a sense of some of the ongoing negotiations that may have been approved by the EU Investment Bank, they are in the final stages of conclusion. Could you give us a sense of maybe the quantum of investments that are right now in the pipeline and could be announced soon?

Beer: I think we will see more or less the €500 million we saw so far each year. There is no question to decrease. We see very interesting missions also here in India, for example, the green hydrogen mission. But that will have to be discussed also against the background that next year, the EU-India summit is coming up. An important event, I think for India and also for us as the European Union and so in this discussion there may be new priorities to be fixed depending on our partners here.

Watch the video for more