LONDON (Reuters) -British finance minister Rachel Reeves said on Wednesday she aimed to catalyse 70 billion pounds ($90.6 billion) of investment through the newly created National Wealth Fund to spur investment and build new infrastructure.
“By restoring economic stability, and by establishing the National Wealth Fund to catalyse private funding, we have begun to create the conditions that businesses need to invest,” Reeves said as she announced the Labour Party’s first budget in almost 15 years.
“We are confirming our plans to capitalise the National Wealth Fund to invest in the industries of the future, from gigafactories, to ports to green hydrogen.”
Designed to mobilise private sector capital to help speed up economic growth, the Leeds-headquartered fund is expected to support Britain in its clean energy transition.
Earlier this month, Reeves said the NWF, established following Labour’s election victory in July, would work with industry partners, including mayors, to deploy up to 27.8 billion pounds of capital.
Of that total, the fund inherited 22 billion pounds from the existing UK Infrastructure Bank while an additional 5.8 billion pounds of taxpayers’ money was promised by the government.
The NWF will have a broader mandate than just infrastructure and will test “blended finance solutions” with private capital to allow government departments to take on additional risk, Reeves has said.
The fund’s investment approach will be flexible with each opportunity assessed on a case-by-case basis, the government has said previously.
Private companies have complained that it takes too long to build the kind of infrastructure needed to bolster growth in Britain. Prime Minister Keir Starmer has promised a regulatory overhaul to address those concerns.
($1 = 0.7729 pounds)
(Reporting by David Milliken and Sachin Ravikumar; Writing by Muvija M; Editing by Kate Holton and Hugh Lawson)
