FM stresses on PPP for infrastructure

Statesman News Service, 7 September

NEW DELHI, Sept 6: The finance minister, Mr P Chidambaram, today called upon state governments to mainstream public private partnership (PPP) in infrastructure development and to take full benefits of the various schemes and initiatives of his ministry.
Since many of the state governments had not caught up with the PPP idea and most of the projects were confined to a few states, help could be taken from a panel of 11 expert transaction advisors, Mr Chidambaram said, addressing the parliamentary consultative committee meeting here today. He said the PPP issue had been discussed in detail at the two national and four regional level conferences organised by the finance ministry.
India’s economic performance in the past few years, particularly in the last three years, had been commendable on many counts, Mr Chidambaram said. He added, “Economic growth has accelerated and we are now averaging an annual growth in excess of 8 per cent.”
As per the revised estimates released by CSO on 31 May, GDP at factor cost at 1999-2000 prices was estimated at Rs 28,482 billion. National income aggregates in net terms had a higher rate of growth (9.4) in 2006-07. Alternate measures of national income at current prices yielded a growth of 15.2 to 15.8 per cent in 2006-07.
The finance minister, however, stated that India’s infrastructure deficiencies had become more visible because of a higher growth. The most visible indicators of overstretched infrastructure were India’s congested highways, airports and ports.
Traffic at ports has grown over 2005-06 at 13 per cent; air passenger movement at 25 per cent and air cargo at 10 per cent over the last two years exceeding expectations.
The Railways has clocked a growth of 9 per cent in freight, 8 per cent in passenger traffic over the last three years.