Japan Bank for International Cooperation has signed a loan agreement with NTT Global Data Centers & Cloud Infrastructure India Private Limited ( NTT GDCI ), an Indian subsidiary of Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation ( NTT ).

The bank is providing 13 billion rupees ( US$152 million ). The loan is co-financed with MUFG Bank and Mizuho Bank, bringing the total co-financing amount to 21.7 billion rupees.   

The loan is intended to provide the funds necessary for NTT GDCI to build and operate data centres in the states of Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu in India.   

In its Medium-Term Management Strategy announced in May 2023, NTT set a goal of investing at least 1.5 trillion yen ( US$13.35 billion ) in its data centre business over five years, with the aim of further expanding its data centre infrastructure, which is the third largest in the world. To this end, India’s data centre market is crucial for NTT Group.

The Indian government launched its Data Centre Policy 2020, which envisions making India a global data centre hub. The market is expected to expand amid the prospect of further increases in data traffic due to the growing use of digital technologies, such as generative AI, e-commerce, and social media.   

The loan will provide financial support for NTT’s overseas business expansion and help improve the business environment for Japanese companies and enhance their supply chain resilience by ensuring secure telecommunications infrastructure whose reliability and safety are assured. The loan will also contribute towards maintaining and strengthening the international competitivenessss of Japanese industries.

Last October, JBIC signed an arrangement to cooperate with the launch of the Digital Infrastructure Growth Initiative for India ( DiGi ) with the US International Development Finance Corporation ( DFC ) and the Export-Import Bank of Korea ( Kexim ). JBIC extends the loan under the DiGi framework.

In March 2024 JBIC signed a 10.2 billion rupee loan with NTT GDCI. The loan was co-financed with Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation and MUFG Bank, bringing the total co-financing amount to 17 billion rupees.