Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik on Saturday said the Department of Economic Affairs (DEF) should consider a new project for supporting public-private partnerships (PPPs) in Odisha, even as support is provided to State Viability Grant Fund (SVGF) for taking up more annuity-based projects in social sectors like healthcare, education, rural roads and drinking water supply.
“The annual growth rate of Odisha over last years has been close to 9 per cent in spite of the global slowdown. Poverty has been reduced from 57.2 per cent in 2004-05 to 37 per cent in 2009-10, the highest decline among all States. There has been significant improvement in other human indexes like literacy rate, birth rate and infant mortality rate,” said Patnaik.
Stating that the Government is giving top priority on infrastructural development during 12th Plan period, Patnaik said the PPP projects have been taken up in sectors like bulk water supply in satellite town of Bhubaneswar, solid waste management, health services network in Bhubaneswar, power saving street lights.
Speaking on the occasion DEA Secretary Dr Arvind Mayaram said Odisha has done remarkably well in drawing public-private-partnership (PPP) investment to the State over the years.
“India has emerged as the largest PPP market in the world. It is quite astonishing that, in a very short period, Government of Odisha has pipelined PPP projects worth Rs 13,000 crore in public infrastructure,” Dr Mayaram said.
“The achievement of the Odisha Government in this respect can be termed as a plan outside the plan, which has been created to achieve the objectives of the original plan,” Mayaram added.
He hailed the State Government in taking up an innovative ‘Power-saving street lighting’ project via PPP mode, which shall act as a model for replication in other States.
Chief Secretary JK Mohapatra said the State portfolio of PPPs is more diverse including the services like education, health and water supply which have more significance for good governance.
Special Secretary PPP and Project Monitoring Pradeep Kumar Jena informed that out of around 100 finalised projects in different sectors like health care, education, water supply, warehousing urban management, tourism, power transmission, roads and ports; 26 projects worth more than Rs 13.000 crore are under implementation.