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Planners urge govt to delink infrastructure projects from populism

The political announcements like free power and free water are not economically feasible for development of infrastructure and civic facilities, according to Prakash Jawadekar, executive president of Maharashtra State Planning Board.

Addressing a seminar on public-private sector partnership for urban infrastructure projects in Bombay today, Jawadekar said that while cross-subsidisation of service cost could be possible to a limited way, there was a need to base infrastructure project costs rationally and realistically for private sector participation.

The real problem was the failure in estimating and calculating growth projections for infrastructure projects, he said. All projections for urban development and growth in Bombay and the surrounding areas like Thane, Dombivli and Pune have missed the real growth to take into account the water and sanitation requirements.

In this context, he mentioned that in Maharashtra alone, Rs 600 billion had been envisaged for basic infrastructure investments relating to water and sanitation, industrial estates, roads, housing and irrigation in the Ninth Five Year Plan.

Earlier, K Ramachand, vice president of Infrastructure Leasing and Financial Services, said that urban infrastructure did not get adequate emphasis and was not looked at as commercially viable projects especially for water supply, drainage and sanitation.

He called for the need to prepare such projects as bankable ones and also for concerted effort by state government to avoid multiplicity of institutions responsible for urban infrastructure.

Hemendra Kumar, additional secretary, Union ministry of urban affairs and employment, said that in the next 25 years, India would become a predominantly urban nation with more than 50 per cent of the population living in urban areas. Therefore, there would be a heavy demand for urban infrastructure and estimates were for Rs 1.2 trillion would be required to develop urban infrastructure in the next five years.

He said that private participation in urban infrastructure was encouraged in all countries and this was a general trend in India. However, it was necessary to accept that the users will have to pay for the services provided.

He also mentioned that the study done by Rail India Technical and Economic Services showed that if metro rail was to be provided in all cities with two million plus population, the investment would be Rs 1.2 trillion.

UNI

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