The inter-ministerial panel set up to fast track work in the infrastructure sector by removing roadblocks and hastening processes will be meeting next week.
Minister for Road, Transport and Highways Nitin Gadkari, who heads the panel, has sought ideas from the various Ministries on ways to attract investors, who have been shying away from putting money in the sector for the last two years, because of poor returns and delays in project completions.
After a wait of almost two months, since the Cabinet gave a go-ahead for seven big ticket highway projects worth Rs16,000 crore, only two road projects of around 356 km, including 190 km and Rs3,200 crore worth four-laning of Yedeshi-Aurangabad section of NH-211 in Maharashtra and Rs2,300 crore worth 166 km stretch of Kaithal to Rajasthan border in Haryana have been awarded.
“Although the Government is working very hard to revive the sector and is taking big measures like easing clearances, restructuring premiums for developers to name some, a turn around anytime soon seems like a distant possibility,” said an official from the Ministry.
“This financial year, it seems that we may not only fail to achieve our road building target of 8,500 km but also award target of 7,000 km. We plan to give out 50 per cent on PPP mode and the rest under EPC (Equipment, Procurement Construction- where the risk is on the Government),” said the official.
To hasten projects, the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) is working on splitting the Eastern Peripheral project expressway into six smaller packages, before calling for fresh bids. If this works well and gets bidders, the Delhi-Meerut expressway may also be split into smaller projects, to be bid out in a similar way.
This will be the second time the Delhi-Meerut Expressway and Eastern Peripheral would be coming up for bidding under the EPC mode as the bids under PPP failed to attract participants.
“The big worry is the declining interest of private developers in the Build-Operate-Transfer mode, where the private player puts in the money at his risk and the Government provides the land,” said the official.“The Government is increasingly shifting towards an EPC mode, where the Government bears all financial risk, but it is not possible for all projects,” he said.
The Government is also keen on attracting investments in the inland waterways sector. It intends to build terminals, waterports and seaports. At an industry body ACMA’s event on Wednesday, Gadkari also offered to give all facilities and concessions to industry showing interest in building the projects.
Gadkari said that he would want to bring the current 0.5 per cent of waterways traffic in India at par with China which is 20 per cent of its total traffic.