NIIF CEO to be appointed soon: Das

Government today said it is in the process of appointing CEO for India's first Rs 40,000-crore sovereign wealth fund NIIF, which will act as a nodal agency for development of infrastructure.
The government in December last year had set up the National Investment and Infrastructure Fund (NIIF), which is an investment vehicle for funding commercially viable greenfield, brown-field and stalled projects.
"We are in the process of appointing the CEO and also building up doing recruitment for...It will be a very lean organisation of recruiting people down the line," Secretary in Department of Economic Affairs Shaktikanta Das said here.
He said the process to appoint the CEO is on and "I think you will see somebody in place very quickly".

"But in the meantime, we have been interacting with various pension funds, superannuation funds, sovereign wealth funds and we are at very advance stage and...I can assure you that in 2016-17 NIIF is going to be a very big player in the infrastructure segment in our country," he added.
Das said the Public Utility (Resolution of Disputes) Bill

is being finalised and efforts will be made to introduce in the second leg of the Budget Session or during the Monsoon Session.
In his Budget speech, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley had announced the bill will be introduced during 2016-17 to streamline institutional arrangements for resolution of disputes in infrastructure related construction contracts, PPP and public utility contracts.

Speaking at the event, DIPP Secretary Ramesh Abhishek said that the department will launch a portal where states will update their progress on a set of 340 development parameters on a real-time basis, in a move aimed at promoting competition to improve ease of doing business.
"In a few days we will be launching a portal on which all the states will be uploading their progress on these 340 points and virtually there a ranking will be done on almost real time basis. So one does not have to wait till June 30 for ranking of states," he said.
Talking about other steps on ease of doing business, he said the Urban Development Ministry has prepared model by laws in which environmental clearances are also embedded and these by laws have been implemented in Delhi.

"So up to 1.5 lakh sq mt of construction, you don't need any permission or environmental clearance," he said adding in this construction portal, all agencies except four have been integrated but "we still are going to integrate in the next few weeks".
Those agencies include National Monument Authority, Airport Authority of India, and Coastal Zone Authority.