PM targets projects worth Rs115,000 core for PPP investment

Prime minister Manmohan Singh today set an investment target of Rs1,15,000 crore in public private partnership (PPP) projects in the infrastructure sectors, including aviation, railways, port and power, over the next six months in a bid to ramp up investor sentiment.

The proposals include Rs30,000 crore investment in the proposed Mumbai elevated rail corridor, two international airports in Bhubneshwar and Imphal at an investment of Rs20,000 crore and power and transmission projects costing Rs40,000 crore.

The decisions were taken at a meeting to finalise infrastructure projects for 2013-14, which was attended by finance minister P Chidambaram, Planning Commission deputy chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia and ministers of power, coal, railways, roads, shipping and civil aviation.

The target for the civil aviation sector includes setting up of two new international airports at Bhubaneswar and Imphal, 50 new low-cost small airports to be taken up by Airports Authority of India, eight greenfield airports to be taken up this year in public-private participation (PPP) mode in Navi Mumbai, Juhu (Mumbai), Goa, Kannur, Pune (Rajguru Nagar Chakan), Sriperumbudur, Bellary and Raigarh. Besides, airport operations and maintenance through PPP contracts will be introduced in AAI airports, including Chennai, Kolkata, Lucknow, Guwahati, Jaipur and Ahmedabad airports.

The AAI also poposes to set up low-cost airports at Vijayawada, Nellore, Kurnool, Kadapa, Nizamabad, Tirupati, Anantapur and Karimnagar in Andhra Pradesh; Dhanbad, Bokaro and Hazaribagh in Jharkhand; Muzaffarpur, Chapra and Sasaram in Bihar; Ludhiana, Jalandhar and Firozpur in Punjab; Agra, Allahabad, Moradabad, Saharanpur, Meerut, Aligarh, Muzaffarnagar, Bijnor and Azamgarh in Uttar Pradesh; Tezu, Momdila and Along in Arunachal Pradesh; Silchar, Jorhat and Tezpur Assam; Gwalior, Singrauli, Burhanpur, Khandwa, Jabalpur, Sidhi and  Shahdol in Madhya Pradesh; Brahmpur, Raurkela and Kendujhar in Odisha; Ajmer, Kota, Bhilwada and Alwar in Rajasthan and Kolhapur, Nasik, Jalgaon, Solapur and Amarawati in Maharashtra.

In the shipping and ports sector the cabinet has approved the proposals for setting up two new PPP ports at Sagar (West Bengal) and Durgarajapatnam (Andhra Pradesh).

The prime minister said an inter-ministerial group of railways, finance and planning will be formed with the task of coming up with a creative financing-cum-implementation mechanism in two months for clearing the large backlog of sanctioned projects of over Rs200,000 crores in a prioritised and time-bound manner.

The proposal for creating a Rail Tariff Authority will be accelerated and brought to cabinet soon, he said, adding that the flagship projects of railways such as the two loco manufacturing projects, elevated rail corridor, the dedicated freight corridor and station redevelopment will be closely monitored for award in the next six months.

In the rodas sector, the prime minister said, the slowdown in the award of projects would get reversed in view of the large number of relaxations that have already been provided to PPP road projects. Expressways will get focused attention and the Planning Commission will work with the ministry of road transport and highways to suggest an implementation mechanism for expressways.

In the power sector, the ministry will work with Planning Commission and the finance ministry to resolve remaining issues in the power sector and improve generation and transmission capacity. He said the power ministry is working on a separate provision to operationalise open access.

He said the government will soon put in place new policies for ramping up coal production in the country.

A steering group is being formed to monitor the award and implementation of projects from among the following on priority: