PM sets ambitious infrastructure targets

Meeting identifies Rs 115,000 cr of projects on PPP mode; airports get a major push

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Friday turned his focus to addressing bottlenecks in infrastructure, regarded as one of the main obstacles in the slackening investment zeal of Indian business, dragging down overall economic growth.

He reviewed the status of major infra projects and tasked various ministries to roll out public-private partnerships (PPPs) in the next six months of identified projects worth Rs 115,000 crore. These include the Mumbai Elevated Railway Corridor, two new locomotive projects, one expressway project between either Delhi and Jaipur or Delhi and Ludhiana, and two new ports, in West Bengal and Andhra Pradesh.

At the meeting were the ministers in charge of coal, power, ports and shipping, aviation, railways and roads. Briefing reporters afterwards, Planning Commission Deputy Chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia said the rollout and progress of these projects are to be monitored by a committee chaired by Pulok Chatterji, principal secretary to the Prime Minister. The Planning Commission will be involved, too.

“Of the Rs 115,000 crore of targeted projects, I can’t say if all of them will be started. But even if we manage to start projects worth Rs 100,000 crore by the end of this financial year, it will be a big achievement,” said Ahluwalia.

The PM highlighted the need to ramp up investment in infrastructure to revive investor sentiment, an official statement said. He also set targets for various other infrastructure projects in 2013-14.

In civil aviation, these include two new international airports, at Bhubaneswar and Imphal; 50 new small airports by the Airports Authority of India, and eight new airports in PPP mode, at Navi Mumbai, Juhu-Mumbai, Goa, Kannur, Pune, Sriperumbudur, Bellary and Rajgarh.

Besides, airport operations and maintenance through PPP contracts will be introduced in AAI-run airports. Those being considered are Chennai, Kolkata, Lucknow, Guwahati, Jaipur and Ahmedabad airports.

On the railways, Ahluwalia said the big problem was that the department was not capable of funding projects from its own resources and budgetary support. “It was decided at the meeting that an inter-ministerial committee will be constituted comprising the Planning Commission, finance ministry and the railways to find innovative ways of financing, including borrowing targeted at a specific project,” said Ahluwalia.

REVIVING ‘ANIMAL SPIRITS’

• Plan to start at least Rs 1 lakh cr worth projects in 6 months
• 60 new airport projects under different modes
• Panel of PlanCom, FinMin & railways to finalise report in two months on financing of Rs 2 lakh cr of stalled rail projects
• RailMin to finalise Cabinet note on rail rate authority
• PetroMin to prepare Cabinet note on doing away with preferential gas allocations
• Targets given to all infra ministers
• Progress to be monitored by PM’s principal secretary

The committee will come out with new mechanisms in about two months for clearing the large backlog of sanctioned projects, of a little over Rs 200,000 crore, in a prioritised and time-bound manner. He also said the railways ministry would shortly float a cabinet note on a Railway Tariff Authority.

On the issues raised in the meeting, Ahluwalia said the power ministry flagged the issue of coal availability for thermal units. There was, he said, some satisfaction that things had started moving in this direction after a long wait.

The earlier Cabinet panel decision on imported coal to pre-2009 power plants and its implications were highlighted. “There was a general satisfaction that coal linkages to almost 78,000 Mw of power capacity have been resolved and of the pre-2008 plants, linkages to almost 68,000-Mw capacity have been provided for.”

On gas availability, the Plan panel head said it was a problem area and the policy of preferential allocation should be done away with because of low availability. “The department of petroleum was directed to bring a note to the cabinet about how this can be achieved,” he said.

On roads, the ministry said though the targets were less than last year’s, they’d try to improve on these. In 2012-13, while the targeted road length to be awarded was 9,500 km, only 1,321 km was awarded. For 2013-14, a target of awarding 5,000 km has been fixed.