Asia’s richest man, Gautam Adani, made his vast fortune betting on coal as an energy hungry India grew swiftly after liberalizing its economy in the 1990s.
The college drop out from a middle-class family fits the government’s need for “national champions,” both to meet domestic goals and as private sector partners in strategic projects outside India, said Mihir Sharma, an economist at the Observer Research Foundation, a New Delhi-based think tank. Adani has also invested in agriculture, a huge priority for Modi given the importance of the farm vote.
Adani has capitalized on Indian government incentives promoting self reliance and achieving net zero by 2070, recently receiving nearly $90-million in government subsidies to produce solar modules. Energy-hungry Bangladesh will soon start receiving a share of its electricity from an Adani coal-fired plant under construction in eastern India.
Earlier this year, Adani Ports gained a 70 per cent stake in Israel’s Haifa Port, near Haifa Bay Port, which is managed by China’s Shanghai International Port Group. The group committed to investing in projects in Tanzania after a Chinese-managed port deal, part of its ambitious Belt and Road Initiative, ran into difficulties.