Centre to fix Rs 30,000 crore projects

Mumbai: In an attempt to boost investment to quicken the country’s economic recovery, the government is fast tracking projects that have been stalled for various reasons like delays in land acquisition, environmental clearances etc.

In the latest move, the Union minister for road transport and highways Nitin Gadkari has set a deadline of February 15, to resolve the issues, including fund crunch, which are stalling highway projects worth Rs 30,000 crore.

“We have set a deadline of 15 days to solve all issues of stuck 14 highway projects worth about Rs 30,000 crore,” the minister said.

When the Narendra Modi government took reins of the government, there were as many as 384 stuck highway projects on account of various issues. “Our efforts led to rolling out of majority of the 384 projects while we had to terminate 41 sche-mes. Of the remaining 21 languishing projects, issues have been solved for seven while we are confident to resolve issues with remaining 14 within a fortnight,” Mr Gadkari said.

According to some estimates, India needs about $1 trillion (about Rs 67 lakh crore) for building new roads, ports and airports over the next few years.

The BJP government plans to solve issues which are holding up infrastructure projects to achieve higher economic growth. As part of this, the government has evolved a hybrid model for awarding road projects as infrastructure companies, saddled with debt, are in no position to  take up projects in he build-own-transfer (BOT) model.

The government is also said to be actively considering terminating seven to eight of the remaining projects, according to an unnamed official quoted by the news agency PTI.

Speaking to this newspaper, the National High-ways Builders Associ-ation (NHBA) director general M. Murali, he is hopeful of the 14 stalled projects being resolved as there are meetings to discuss these in a day or two.  

He said that the concessionaires have suggested that the government should extend the concessionaire’s period to the extent of the delays in the project taking off due to  delays on the government’s side and that the government should provide compensation for cost escalation because of the delays caused in getting various government permissions.

Regarding the possible termination of seven to eight projects, Mr Murali said the suspicion of ‘funds diversion’ will have to be proved as no action has been taken so far by the vigilance authorities against these firms.   

The projects relate to key national highways in Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Haryana, Rajasthan, Jha-rkhand, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Mahar-ashtra, Odisha, Tamil Nadu, Uttarakhand and West Bengal.

Mr Murali said that in future unless all permissions are obtained, projects should not be awarded  and secondly project contracts should have an escalation clause or a revisit clause where costs are updated regularly to avoid problems in future.   

Meanwhile the  Prime Minister's Office has rep-ortedly asked NITI Aayog to prepare a report on stalled hydel power projects which have held up large-scale investment as the government aims to provide 24x7 electricity across the country.

The proposed hydro capacity addition during the 12th Plan period is 10,897 MW. However, up to December 2015, the actual capacity addition is only 3,651.02 MW which is 33.5 per cent of the proposed capacity addition, according to data by Central Electricity Authority.

Of India's total installed capacity of 2,84,303.39 MW as on December 31, 2015, large hydro capacity is 42,623.42 MW and small hydro capacity is 4,147 MW, CEA data said.