(Bloomberg) -- India provides an opportunity for companies to allocate additional capital that can diversify risk away from China, according to BNP Paribas SA.
Money flowing into India, the third-largest Asian economy, will help drive a turnaround in its supply chain and boost manufacturing as the nation recovers from the pandemic shock, said Aymar de Liedekerke Beaufort, the French bank's territory head for India.
“I think India is perceived as a strategic country, is geographically well-positioned and it is a diversification from China,” he said Thursday in an interview on Bloomberg TV. “So when you have lots of capacity in China, when you look for another place to put this additional capacity, India is coming underway.”
A regulatory crackdown in China's financial technology sector is diverting billions of dollars into other countries, including India, which is set for a record year of equity offerings. That comes at a time when India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi has announced plans to invest 100 trillion rupees ($1.3 trillion) in infrastructure and aims to do so by competing for investments looking to move out of China.
BNP Paribas, the second-oldest foreign bank in India which received 100 million euros as equity from its parent last year, is looking to grow its investment banking team, hire in digital banking and add more women employees, Beaufort said.
The firm is also looking to expand its sustainable funding portfolio and will try to fund companies with good quality projects in solar and wind, he said. BNP Paribas in India helped raise $2.3 billion of green and sustainable loans and arranged over $2.9 billion in ESG bond issuances in 2021.
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