Infra authority for PPP projects soon

Infrastructure Development Dept identifies 200 projects across eight key sectors

The Karnataka government which aims to undertake massive infrastructure projects across the state, plans to set up an independent statutory body to fast track various projects in a time-bound manner. The new body, which will be headed by the chief secretary, will have powers to approve all mega infrastructure projects under the public private partnership (PPP) model, a top government official said.

“The proposed ‘Karnataka Infrastructure Authority’ will have the highest powers to review and approve all PPP projects on public need and ‘Value for Money’ basis. The authority has been proposed under the new Infrastructure Bill. We have already held two rounds of industry and inter-ministerial consultation to fine tune the bill. The legislature department has also cleared the bill which will be tabled in the coming assembly session,” Rajkumar Khatri, Secretary, Infrastructure Development Department (IDD), said.

The proposed infrastructure bill will go to the cabinet for final approval very soon, he said.

The IDD has identified 189 infrastructure projects across eight key sectors like transportation & logistics, agri infrastructure, education, energy, health, industrial infrastructure, tourism and, urban and municipal infrastructure that will require an estimated investment of Rs 2,00,657 crore, he said.

The state government would invite expressions of interest from the private sector for these projects in the next few weeks.

“The state government alone cannot fund all these projects from the budgetary allocations. So, the government has decided to open up these projects to the private sector which will invest in them. The government will play the role of a facilitator and provide viability gap funding. We are in the process of setting up our own Karnataka Viability Gap Fund with an initial corpus of Rs 500 crore,” Khatri told Business Standard.

The Viability Gap Funding Scheme provides financial support in the form of grants, one time or deferred, to infrastructure projects undertaken through public private partnerships with a view to making them commercially viable.

As part of its capacity building programme, the IDD has so far trained 250 officers from 12 government departments on PPP project management with the help of National Law School, Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore and IDFC among others. These officers will help execute these infrastructure projects, he said.

IDD has signed a MoU with department of economic affairs, government of India and IDFC fund for rolling out a yearly programme with 12 programmes in a year.

It is also collaborating with National Law School and IIMB to roll out specific Training of Trainer programmes, among others.

IDD has also formed 10 PPP Cells in 12 departments to supervise the execution of several infrastructure projects, Khatri added.