The Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), Chhattisgarh organised an Industry Roundtable with Anil Swarup, IAS, Additional Secretary and Chairman, Project Monitoring Group, Cabinet Secretariat here on Monday.
Earlier during the day, Swarup met Chief Secretary Vivek Dhand at the Mantralaya in Naya Raipur. Swarup, after the meeting with the Chief Secretary remarked, “The discussions and the responses received from the Chhattisgarh Government were “encouraging and fruitful”.
Chhattisgarh is among the 14 States in the country to have their own ‘Project Monitoring Groups’ to fast track stalled projects between Rs 100 crore to Rs 1,000 crore. There are a total of 437 stalled projects nationally. Of which 152 have already been resolved.
In Chhattisgarh, there are a total of 42 stalled projects worth Rs 2.15 lakh crore. Of these, 20 projects worth Rs 90,630 crore have been resolved and 15 projects are under consideration.
“After all, our collective aim is to remove bottlenecks and get the stalled projects get off the ground. As of now, more than 40 per cent big projects are awaiting clearances from the Forest, Environment and Mining Ministries. As to the State PMGs, we will take up their cases with the Ministries concerned. Our job is to get the projects going that are stuck at the Government levels,” the PMG chief explained.
Swarup also spoke about the ‘e-PMS Project Management System.’ The online ‘Project Management System’ has been developed for tracking projects with investment of between Rs 100 crores to Rs 1000 crores. It automates the entire tracking of stalled investment projects in the context of bottlenecks.
Chhattisgarh is among the few states in the country, where the portal is in operational mode. At the state level, the meetings would be chaired by the Chief Secretary, Government of Chhattisgarh.
Earlier, during his welcome address, Manish Gupta, Immediate Past Chairman, CII Chhattisgarh State Council and Co-Chair, Infrastructure Sub-committee, CII Eastern Region said, “Delays give rise to disruption of work, loss of productivity, delayed completion of projects, escalated costs, and abandonment or termination of contracts.”
“Delay in projects lead to time and cost overrun which raises cost by even 20%, making investment decisions commercially challenging and even unviable. It is not only about increasing the investment/GDP ratio, but also reducing ICOR (incremental capital/output ratio),” he said.
Ashish Jain during his concluding remarks said, “Chhattisgarh is one of the fast emerging destinations for investments in a number of sectors like infrastructure, manufacturing, trade, insurance, healthcare and renewable energy. Focus on implementation of project on a time-bound manner would make Chhattisgarh a preferred destination for investors.”
Also present during the Industry Roundtable was Shruti Singh, IAS, Director, Directorate of Industries, Government of Chhattisgarh.