Plan To Liberalise Port Privatisation Policies
In the port sector, the government plans to constructs 300-400 additional berths at the 11 major ports. Most of construction will be undertaken by private parties.
There is also a proposal to entrust more powers to port trusts to bring them at par with public sector undertakings.
The minister outlined the need for private investment due to resource crunch.
The government has accorded top priority to the infrastructure sector. It has already set up an infrastructure development finance company, besides other measures.
He said to widen the scope of private participation, the ministry has identified new areas for investment in the port sector. These include construction of terminal A, B, and C grade terminal at Jawahar Lal Nehru port, container freight station at Kandla, container handling equipment at Mumbai, besides four multi-purpose berths at Visakhapatnam and construction of harbours at Visakhapatnam, Madras and Tuticorin.
The growth of the highway sector too has been affected by fund shortage. The ninth plan outlay is expected to be increased to Rs 7,000 crore compared with Rs 3,100 in the eight plan.
Though this is an increase of 125.8 per cent, it is still going to fall short by Rs 15,000 crore. This is because the fund requirement estimated by the working group on formulation of the ninth plan is a massive Rs 22,000 crore