New Delhi: International Finance Corp. (IFC) aims to scale up its India investments by about 30% to $7 billion this fiscal year ending 30 June, said Sarvesh Suri, regional vice-president for Asia and the Pacific at World Bank Group’s private sector-focused development finance arm, in an interview to Mint. This comes in the wake of expanded long-term project financing with a focus on private sector-led job creation.
IFC backs sectors including city projects, e-mobility, small businesses, energy transition and agriculture.
The agency has scaled up its long-term commercial financing in India sharply over the last few years, with investments jumping four times to $5.4 billion in 2024-25 from $1.3 billion in 2021-22.
“Last fiscal year (ended 30 June 2025), we closed about $5.4 billion in long-term finance in India. This year, within the first eight months, we've already closed around $5.2 billion and aim to reach $7 billion by the end of June,” said Suri, adding that IFC aims to achieve $10 billion of long-term finance annually in India by 2030, a goal discussed when managing director Makhtar Diop, visited India last year.
Development finance from institutions such as IFC plays a key role not only in bridging the long-term finance gaps for growth in sectors like infrastructure, but also in helping share the risk and in crowding in of larger private sector capital.
Going local
“A significant part of our work in India involves partnering with municipalities and state governments to provide commercial, non-sovereign lending," Suri said. "We recently assisted the city of Vizag (Visakhapatnam) in raising commercial financing from IFC and other partners for water and sanitation projects. We are now pursuing similar sub-sovereign lending with several other Indian cities,”
IFC’s $60 million investment for a project of Greater Visakhapatnam Municipal Corporation (GVMC) is its first to an urban local body in India. The World Bank and IFC collaborate in developing programmes to assist municipalities, given the complexities in such transactions at the sub-national level.
Counter-cyclical effort
Economic shocks such as covid-19 and the ongoing global energy supply disruption plays a role in the development finance institution’s investment strategy—a counter-cyclical approach to step up support, including equity investments in tough situations.
“We are also working with various governments at this point of time to assess if they need working capital financing or guarantees at the sovereign or state-owned enterprise level to support them in global markets to procure essential inputs like oil and gas," Suri said.
"While India is very well-positioned and may not require such support, we are actively discussing these options in some smaller countries,” he added.
Upbeat on India
Suri said that from his interactions with private sector companies and banks in India, businesses are “quite upbeat in terms of investments”. India has consistently been one of the world's fastest-growing economies, Suri said, citing the over 7% GDP growth reported during FY24-26.
India's second advance estimate, issued by the statistics ministry on 27 February has projected a 7.6% growth in FY26.
“To achieve the 'Viksit Bharat' status by 2047, we estimate India will need to sustain a growth rate of about 7.8% for the next two decades. Within the government's supportive policy and macroeconomic framework, and with the assistance of IFC and other multilateral partners, we believe this growth rate is highly achievable over the next 20 years,” said Suri.
Suri said the Indian government's work in the electronics value chain, attracting major manufacturers like Apple and fostering linkages with micro, small and medium businesses for component manufacturing, are considered significant success stories. “The government is actively seeking our support and that of other partners, to replicate such success and cultivate a robust growth environment,” said Suri.
Investment spree
Suri said India's strong economic growth, government's supporting reforms and a favorable demographic profile makes IFC bullish on continuing investment and support for the country's private sector.
In FY25, IFC's long-term finance across Asia Pacific was $13.1 billion and it has already crossed that figure this year, with a full quarter to go. “We expect our growth within the Asia Pacific region this year to be close to 50% compared to last year's numbers,” said Suri about IFC’s growing investments in the region.
Globally, IFC achieved its third consecutive year of record results in FY25, committing $72 billion during the year—doubling the amount from three years ago, and up from last year's record $56 billion, information shared by the World Bank arm showed.
Job creation focus
The multilateral agency's country partnership deal with India focuses on inclusive, job-creating growth.
“We acknowledge the need to accelerate job creation and are concentrating on sectors that will enable this. Globally, job creation is a significant challenge for the emerging markets. We anticipate close to 1.2 billion people entering the workforce in developing countries over the next decade, but only about 400 million jobs may be created on a business-as-usual basis," said Suri.
"This disparity is precisely why the World Bank Group has prioritized ‘more and better jobs’ as a core objective for the next 10 years, which has been weaved into the India Country Partnership Framework,” he said.
Suri said that IFC is currently shifting from being a lending bank to a leveraging bank—using its own financing to mobilize much larger volumes of private capital, with a target of five dollars of private investment for every dollar from IFC by 2030, up from about two and a half at present.
