The projects being identified include urban development and smart cities.

India is identifying projects worth $2-3 billion that could be funded by the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said on Saturday. Mr. Jaitley signalled India’s full support for the China-led lender by calling upon it to open a regional office in New Delhi — a move that could help support South Asia’s burgeoning demand for infrastructure.

The projects in India, which were being identified, were in the areas of urban development, including smart cities, urban transport, energy, inland waterways and water supply, Mr. Jaitley said in his speech at the first annual general meeting of the AIIB.

The finance minister said that far from being a competitor, the “AIIB presents a much needed additional financing window dedicated to infrastructure projects and meeting the financing gap that may be beyond the capacity of the individual countries and the existing Multilateral Development Banks (MDBs)”.

The Beijing-based AIIB is headed by former Assistant Chinese Finance Minister, Jin Liqun, while India’s DJ Pandian is its Vice President and Chief Investment Officer.

Mr. Jailtley said that India had continued to maintain a high growth rate of 7.6 per cent in 2015-16, despite the overall “very modest” recovery of the global economy. In a conversation with resident Indian journalists on Friday, Mr. Jaitley said Britain’s decision to leave the European Union would have only a temporary impact on India.

“The impact on India, one, because of global integration, certainly, the immediate impact, markets and currencies react disproportionately as we have seen," he observed.

The finance minister added: “It then settles down because there is a realisation which is twofold: now, instead of one entity you will have to deal with two and secondly, the future of both markets and currencies will really depend not on these external shocks but on the strength of the real economy.

“And if the strength of the real economy in terms of its own fundamentals is sound then the impact beyond the initial few days gets diluted. At best then it becomes a transient impact which reverses itself in due course."