Role of Infrastructure Investment Trusts (INVITS) in India's Infrastructure Development

Abstract

Infrastructure Investment Trusts (InvITs) are new financial instruments in India, created to meet ever increasing demand of funding for infrastructure development, which is crucial for economic development of any country, especially a developing country like India.  InvITs are created to provide varied sources for its funding and mobilizing private capital to support infrastructure development. This paper provides insight on InvITs' structure, regulation, and operations throughout time. Further, the study compares the cost of funds for InvITs with other infrastructure instruments in debt market and analyzes returns on investments in various public listed InvITs. The study is based on secondary data and results suggests that InvITs has brought new investment to India's infrastructure industry and provide additional opportunities to mobilize private investments in infrastructure and raise funds at lower costs than traditional sources of funds. Investors benefit from generating regular cash dividends, a steady return by investing in InvITs and it also provides the opportunity for the sponsor(s) to expand the size of their asset portfolio.