Financial Express: A $8 billion Bill: India Needs to Invest Quickly in Iran

With sanctions lifted after the nuclear arms treaty, Iran has asked India to invest $8 billion in the ‘golden time’ in infrastructure projects in the country without wasting time on negotiations. It’s an offer that India cannot ignore, but has to respond to quickly.

Since there are enough countries looking to woo Iran now, India needs to respond quickly. With PM Narendra Modi showing great interest in large infrastructure projects, the time is ripe for the government to get cracking.

After all, this includes developing Chabahar, a port west of the Pakistan port city of Gwadar, being developed by China. Chabahar is important since India had agreed to develop the port way back in 2003. First, it provides India a counter-balance to Pakistan and access to landlocked Afghanistan. Second, it allows India to tap into the second largest gas reserves in the world after Russia. India can either ship the gas from there or go in for a sub-sea deepwater pipeline to India avoiding the Pakistani continental shelf. The pipeline that is estimated to cost in the region of over $ 4 billion could supply India 1.1 billion standard cubic metres of gas daily. The advantage is that today there is technology on offer for such pipelines. Third, India can help build railway lines and pipelines that bring gas from other CIS countries to Chabahar. MORE