PM to meet infra ministers tomorrow

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has called a meeting of infrastructure ministries including Road Transport and Shipping, Civil Aviation, Power and New and Renewal Energy tomorrow to take stock of projects and chart out future course of action.
"The meeting to be chaired by the Prime Minister would be attended by Ministers and secretaries of various ministries related to infrastructure and discuss the way forward," a source said.
Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, Road Transport, Highways and Shipping Minister Nitin Gadkari, Railway Minister Suresh Prabhu and Piyush Goyal, who holds the three portfolios--, Power, Coal and New and Renewal-- among others are expected to be present in the meeting.

Besides, secretaries of these departments would also be present.
The Prime Minister is likely to take stock of the infrastructure development activity and discuss ways and means to provide a fillip to the sector to push economic growth.
Infrastructure is a thrust area of this government and high on the agenda of the Prime Minister.

The Finance Minister in the Budget speech had announced several measures to boost infrastructure development in the country.
One of the announcements was conversion of excise duty on petrol and diesel to the extent of Rs 4 per litre into Road Cess to fund investment in roads and other infrastructure.

"An additional sum of Rs 40,000 crore will be made available through this measure for these sectors," Jaitley had said.
Besides, the government has increased FDI caps in defence, Insurance and Railway Infrastructure and rationalised the conditions for FDI in construction and medical devices sectors to attract foreign investment.
Earlier this week, Finance Ministry had called a meeting to heads of banks and top officials of various infrastructure ministries to chalk out a roadmap for clearing bottlenecks that hamper implementation of large projects.
The meeting chaired by Financial Services Secretary Hasmukh Adhia was attended by RBI deputy governor S S Mundra and special secretary at Union Power Ministry R N Choubey. Heads of public sector banks, REC and PFC were also present.

As many as 85 large infra projects in power, steel, roads and port sectors were reviewed.
These projects involve investment of Rs 3.51 lakh crore of bank funding; and of these, 4 per cent have turned dud assets.