By IANS,
New Delhi : State Bank of India Wednesday signed a joint venture agreement with State General Reserve Fund of Oman to to set up a $100m fund to boost investment in India.
“State Bank of India (SBI) and State General Reserve Fund (SRGF) of Oman signed a Joint Venture Agreement to form a Joint Investment Fund here today. This fund will start with a corpus of $100 million to be contributed equally by SGRF and SBI,” said a finance ministry statement.
The agreement was signed by SBI Chairman O.P. Bhatt and Warith Al-Kharusi, chief executive of SGRF, in the presence of Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee and Ahmed Macki, minister of national economy, Oman.
Mukherjee said the agreement would open up new vistas in economic relations between India and Oman.
The fund for the time being will limit itself to only investment opportunities in India. It will invest in all sectors without any preference.
“The fund’s corpus can be expanded up to $1.5 billion through future schemes, depending upon the experience of the initial fund. The purpose of the collaboration is to attract capital into India from that region,” said the statement.
The management of the company shall be owned 50:50 by SBI and SGRF, with equal profit sharing by both sides.
The creation of such a fund was proposed during the visit of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to Muscat in November 2008.