Provogue, Liberty Intnl JV for retail infrastructure development

Mumbai, Oct 16 (UNI) Provogue India today announced plans to invest over Rs 1000 crore to develop malls in six centres in India.

Announcing this here today, Provogue managing director Nikhil Chaturvedi said the investment would be done through its wholly owned retail infrastructure subsidiary ''Prozone Enterprises'' which has entered into a joint venture agreement with Liberty International PLC of the UK in order to develop and manage prime regional shopping centers for the growing organised retail sector in India.

The investment would be funded through Rs 390 crore raised through equity and the remaining will form the debt component, he said at a press conference.

He said the UK-based Liberty International would also pick up a 25 per cent stake in Prozone, subject to FIPB approval.

Based on current projections, Liberty International's equity contribution in respect of these six centres will be of the order of Rs 202.5 crore (roughly 25 million sterling pounds). With property investments of over 7.5 billion sterling pounds, of which regional shopping centers amount to some 85 per cent, Liberty is one of the world's largest such groups and own 9 of the top 25 shopping centres in the UK.

Currently, Provogue is operating from 90 stores and expected to grow to 130 stores by end of March 2007.

On macro level, the present organised retail in India still only represents 3 per cent of the USD 220 billion total annual retail spend in the country. Current forecasts predict that organised retail will grow to some 10 per cent of the total retail industry within five years.

Replying to a question, Mr Chaturvedi said Prozone is already developing large-scale FDI compliant regional shopping centres focused on tier-2 cities and across India.

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