Infra's dismal show: PM to meet ministries, plan panel

Concerned over the dismal performance of infrastructure ministries in the first half of this financial year, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has called a meeting of infrastructure ministries and the Planning Commission next week.

The Planning Commission will make a presentation on the performance of these ministries during the meeting. “The prime minister has called for a meeting of infrastructure ministries to discuss issues behind the non-performance of these ministries and also find solutions for the same,” said an official in the know, who did not want to be identified. The meeting, to be presided over by the prime minister himself, will be attended by secretaries of ministries of power, railways, road transport and highways, civil aviation, and shipping and ports.

According to the Planning Commission's assessment, the best performer in the first half of this financial year was the civil aviation ministry, followed by power and railways. “The civil aviation ministry has worked considerably on the upgrade of airports maintained by the Airports Authority of India and the Mumbai airport,” he said.

“The ports ministry is the last in the list because they have just started the whole process of taking up projects on public-private partnership and ports’ projects take time,” he said.

The road transport ministry continued to lag in award of contracts, though its performance in terms of actual construction of roads has improved in the past six months. The award of projects was hit after the Central Bureau of Investigation raided the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) premises in May and arrested two officials for alleged misuse of office.

Absence of a permanent chairman has also added to the non-performance. NHAI had plans to award over 200 contracts worth Rs 2 lakh crore by the end of the current financial year but has been able to award only 62 till now.

Though the power sector has improved its performance compared to earlier years, according to ministry estimates, addition in generation capacity was only 60 per cent of the targeted 11513 Mw during April-October.

A review in August by the Planning Commission presented an extremely bleak picture of infrastructure ministries. The road transport and highways ministry has been given a target to spend Rs 35,680 crore in 2010-11 to construct 2,500 km of highways. Overall, the infrastructure ministries could spend only 61.27 per cent of the total allocation of Rs 29,934.67 crore in the first quarter.