The NRI Fund, subscription to which closed on May 20, has so far collected Rs 60 crore. UTI officials said that the fund expected another Rs 10-15 crore as the final figures were still being worked out. Officials said that about 2,000 NRI investors had opted for investing in the scheme, which was a healthy number. The amount raised through the scheme is roughly 50 per cent of the amount mopped up by UTI from NRI investors so far. UTI has so far raised about Rs 160 crore from the NRIs since July 1995. Most of the investments have been flowing into US-64, the flagship scheme of UTI. "The fund marks the beginning of a concerted drive by the country's largest mutual fund to attract huge investments from the large NRI community in the world, especiallyin the Gulf countries," said a UTI official.

The NRI Fund offers an assured return of 13.5 per cent annualised for a period of five years and provides a cumulative return option where the amount invested will double in five-and-a-half years. The NRI Fund will be listed on the wholesale debt segment of the National Stock Exchange (NSE). It has been structured as a debt fund which would invest 80 per cent of its corpus in debt instruments, quite similar to the existing assured return schemes of UTI. The minimum subscription level had been pegged at Rs 25,000 as against Rs 10,000 in the case of the funds which target the domestic investors. The scheme had also offered a premature repurchase facility after three years.

UTI had been rather bullish about attracting investors in the NRI Bonds of the State Bank of India (SBI) which came up for redemption on April 1. The redemption amount was pegged at a whopping $450 million. "Some investors have invested the redeemed amount in the NRI Fund," said a UTIofficial.

"The reason for the small level of investment flow from the NRI community so far has been primarily due to lack of a very active marketing effort on our part to tap this huge potential. We have launched the marketing initiative and expect better mobilisation levels in the years to come," said a senior UTI official.