Plan panel to make a core connection

NEW DELHI: India’s landscape could witness a sea change in a couple of years with the government gearing up to fill the critical gaps in infrastructure and provide funding for completion of important projects.

The blueprint for upgrading the existing infrastructure on a priority basis will be prepared later next month after the Planning Commission completes its presentation to the prime minister and his committee on infrastructure on specific problems that need to be addressed, the funding requirement and regulatory changes required to encourage private-public partnerships.

Sources in Yojana Bhawan said Planning Commission deputy chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia will make a series of presentations to Prime minister Manmohan Singh and the committee between October 30 and November 15 identifying precisely concerns that need to be addressed.

He is also expected to push the case for using about $5bn out of foreign exchange reserves annually for funding these projects.

The Planning Commission has already got each of the infrastructure ministries to make one round of comprehensive presentation at Yojana Bhawan on specific problems ailing the sector and measures required to remedy the situation. The second round of presentation on each of the sectors to narrow down priority areas is now underway.

The PM had said late August that the government would ensure that basic infrastructure is improved. He had asked the Planning Commission to prepare a paper indicating the regulatory structure required for each area such as power, roads and ports.

The paper will compare existing systems with international best practices, identify the gaps in existing systems and recommend changes in existing policy, if necessary.

The PM had also set up a committee on infrastructure under his chairmanship to closely monitor progress in all key infrastructure projects on a quarterly basis to ensure that targets are met.

The Planning Commission functions as the executive arm of this committee, identifying bottlenecks in policy implementation, guiding the relevant ministries to speed up implementation of projects and generating ideas for the committee’s consideration.