Infrastructure investment to bear fruit in 5 to 6 months, plan panel member says

NEW DELHI: In what could come as a positive indication for the next government, Planning Commission member (infrastructure) B K Chaturvedi said on Thursday that investment in infrastructure would rebound in the next 5-6 months.

He was responding to TOI on the sidelines of a road safety conference organized by International Road Federation ( IRF) in the capital. "A lot of work has been done in the past few months and most of the issues have been addressed. All these will result in bringing back investment particularly in road, power and port sectors," Chaturvedi said.

The former Cabinet secretary said these factors will help push infrastructure projects, something which is high on the plan panel's agenda.

Even road transport and highways secretary Vijay Chhibber said that there are already signs of revival. "We are pushing more projects no matter whether the works are on build-operate-transfer (BOT) or on government-funding mode. The situation will improve further."

Meanwhile, the National Highways Authority of India ( NHAI) has started the process of tweaking the model concession agreement ( MCA) to bring comfort to financial institutions for lending and also to the concessionaires.

"Obviously, investors want to take more projects. Though some steps have been taken to push investment, there is a need to take more to revive investors' sentiment," said Sudhir R Hoshing, CEO (roads) of Reliance Infrastructure.