A meeting was held by the Prime Minister today to finalise infrastructure targets for 2013-14. The meeting was attended by the Finance Minister, Deputy Chairman, Planning Commission and Ministers and Secretaries of key infrastructure Ministries, i.e., Power, Coal, Railways, Roads, Shipping and Civil Aviation.
The Deputy Chairman, Planning Commission made a presentation bringing out the performance of the six infrastructure ministries in achieving their targets in 2012-13 and the details of the targets that have been set for this year, i.e., 2013-14. These targets were set through a detailed process, first in the Planning Commission by Member (Infrastructure) and later revised through a second round of meetings in PMO.
The sectoral highlights of the Prime Minister`s review and the targets for 2013-14 are:
(i) Civil Aviation
a) Two new international airports at Bhubaneswar and Imphal
b) 50 new low cost small airports will be taken up by Airports Authority of India (see Box)
c) 8 Greenfield Airports are to be awarded this year in PPP mode: Navi Mumbai, Juhu (Mumbai), Goa, Kannur, Pune (Rajguru Nagar Chakan), Sriperumbudur, Bellary and Raigarh
d) Airport operations and maintenance through PPP contracts will be introduced in AAI airports. Airports being considered are Chennai, Kolkata, Lucknow, Guwahati, Jaipur and Ahmedabad
(ii) Ports
a) The two new PPP ports at Sagar (West Bengal) and Durgarajapatnam (Andhra Pradesh) approved by Cabinet will be awarded.
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New Low Cost Airports by AAI
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| Andhra Pradesh: | Vijayawada, Nellore, Kurnool, Kadapa, Nizamabad, Tirupati, Anantapur & Karimnagar |
| Jharkhand: | Dhanbad, Bokaro & Hazaribagh |
| Bihar: | Muzaffarpur, Chapra & Sasaram |
| Punjab: | Ludhiana, Jalandhar & Firozpur |
| Uttar Pradesh: | Agra, Allahabad, Moradabad, Saharanpur, Meerut, Aligarh, Muzaffarnagar, Bijnor & Azamgarh |
| Arunachal Pradesh: | Tezu, Momdila & Along |
| Assam: | Silchar, Jorhat & Tezpur |
| Madhya Pradesh: | Gwalior, Singrauli, Burhanpur, Khandwa, Jabalpur, Sidhi & Shahdol |
| Odisha: | Brahmpur, Raurkela & Kendujhar |
| Rajasthan: | Ajmer, Kota, Bhilwada & Alwar |
| Maharashtra: | Kolhapur, Nasik, Jalgaon, Solapur & Amarawati |
(i) Railways
a) 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 Rs 200,000 crores in a prioritized and time-bound manner.
b) The proposal for creating a Rail Tariff Authority will be accelerated and brought to Cabinet soon.
c) 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.
(ii) Roads
a) The slowdown in the award of road projects should get reversed in view of the large number of relaxations that have already been provided to PPP road projects.
b) Expressways will get focused attention and the Planning Commission will work with the Ministry of Road Transport & Highways to suggest an implementation mechanism for expressways.
(iii) Power
a) The Ministry will work with Planning Commission and Finance Ministry to resolve remaining issues in the power sector and improve generation and transmission capacity.
b) Ministry of Power is working on a separate provision to operationalise open access.
(iv) Coal
a) New policies for ramping up coal production will be put in place.
In addition to the targets, the Prime Minister highlighted the need to ramp up investment in infrastructure to revive investor sentiment. For this purpose, a target of rolling out PPP projects of at least Rs 1 lakh crores in the next six months was set. A steering group is being formed to monitor the award and implementation of projects from among the following on priority:
1) Mumbai Elevated Rail Corridor Rs. 30,000 crore
2) Two Locomotive projects Rs. 5,000 crore
3) Accelerating E-DFC Rs. 10,000 crore
4) One of the two port projects Rs. 10,000 crore
5) Two airport projects Rs. 20,000 crore
6) Power & Transmission projects Rs. 40,000 crore
Total Rs. 1,15,000 crore
The Prime Minister concluded by reiterating that a lot of work still needs to be done and there should be no slackening of the pace of work.