Pranab to review status of large infra projects tomorrow

Keen to accelerate infrastructure development, Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee will review tomorrow the status of eight large projects, including those in the power sector, which are getting delayed due to regulatory clearances.

"Banks have sanctioned loans for eight projects, but these are yet to be implemented due to various regulatory approvals which are pending. While seven of them envisage investments between Rs 1,000-1,500 crore, one is over Rs 5,000 crore," a Finance Ministry official said.

Various public sector banks have approved loans worth Rs 6,124 crore for these projects. The total cost of these projects is Rs 13,867 crore.

Mukherjee has begun reviewing large projects after his meeting with India Inc on August 1. The initiative follows requests by industry leaders for speeding up clearances.

"Besides, several other projects worth Rs 100-1,000 crore will be reviewed by the Finance Minister tomorrow," the official added.

The meeting is also likely to be attended by other ministers belonging to the concerned ministries.

Projects which are slated to come up for review include: Nagai Power Plant (Rs 1,440 crore) in Tamil Nadu, Ideal Energy (Rs 1,391 crore) in Maharashtra, OCL Iron and Steel (Rs 1,190 crore) in Orissa (Rs 1,190 crore) and Palatana Power (Rs 5,279 crore) in Tripura. Besides a Rs 1,259 crore project by Bhartiya City Developers will also come up for review.

In the last review meeting held in mid-November, the government had announced that three mega infrastructure projects envisaging an investment of Rs 25,000 crore have been accorded regulatory clearances.

Infrastructure bottlenecks are considered one of the major impediments in further accelerating economic growth in the country.