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C K Arora in Washington

The Washington-based Emerging Market Partnership is investing in India's cellular communications industry.

The company manages four funds totalling $4.6 billion. Former World Bank senior vice-president and one-time interim prime minister of Pakistan, Moeen Qureshi heads the fund.

Qureshi is co-chairman of Emerging Market Partnership.

He explains that the fund seeks to profit from the turmoil in the emerging markets.

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Defying Qureshi's initial scepticism, the company's first Asia fund, a pool of $1.1 billion, has put a fifth of its money into India, says The Washington Post.

Though Qureshi criticises India's stifling attitude toward the private sector, he concedes in an interview that the privatisation of the cellular communications industry provides attractive investment opportunities.

With partners such as Bell Canada, the Emerging Market Partnership fund has invested in seven of India's dozen cellular markets, becoming the country's largest investor in the field.

Qureshi and another World Bank executive Donald C Roth launched the Emerging Market Partnership in 1992. It received encouragement and financial backing from the American International Group Inc, the insurance giant.

Another key investor in the first fund was the China International Trust and Investment Corp, a company under the wing of China's State Council.

When he invested, little did Qureshi expect markets from Jakarta to Seoul to plunge into turmoil, throwing Asia's economy into the reverse. The picture in those markets today, Qureshi admits now, ''is one of widespread devastation'', and his funds have not come through unscathed. However he believe "We can ride out the storm.''

Indeed, Qureshi and his investors are relatively lucky, says the daily. His funds weren't fully invested when the turmoil first struck in the summer of 1997. About a third of the initial Asia fund, a $1.1 billion pool, hadn't been invested before October of that year.

A new fund, a $1 billion facility, aimed at infrastructure investments in the Islamic world just closed this month.

UNI

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