The Infrastructure Development Finance Company is planning to get mandates from the Union government for divestment of public sector undertakings as a part of its investment banking foray.

"We are interested in functioning as an investment banker for purely infrastructure projects. We have built up sufficient expertise in this area in the last few years. As an advisor, we can create a climate for the launch of projects, which we can subsequently fund," Nasser Munjee, managing director & chief executive officer of IDFC, said.

At present, the company is syndicating loans to the tune of about Rs 300 crore (Rs 3 billion) as part of its merchant banking activity.

IDFC ended fiscal 2003 with disbursements of about Rs 949 crore (Rs 9.49 billion) against Rs 1,506 crore (Rs 15.06 billion) in the previous year. Munjee attributed lower disbursement to the prevailing low interest rate regime.

"Interest rates fell by about 300 basis points last fiscal resulting in many companies not availing of sanctioned loans. Further, many companies opted to prepay loans. We, however, expect disbursements to pick up this year as interest rates have bottomed out. We are targeting around Rs 2,000 crore (Rs 20 billion) of disbursements this year," Munjee added.

Munjee recently also took over as the president of Bombay Chamber of Commerce & Industry. "The focus of the chamber will be on good governance and economic growth through focus on clusters."

IDFC was created in 1998 and has, since then, developed innovative project finance techniques such as takeout financing. It catalysed road development programmes, helped telecom sector migrate from licence fee to revenue sharing regime.