Meet to chalk out infrastructure policy today

The Centre has called for a crucial meet of all state chief secretaries and bankers tomorrow to iron out issues in the infrastructure sector...

The Centre has called for a crucial meet of all state chief secretaries and bankers tomorrow to iron out issues in the infrastructure sector and work out a uniform policy for public-private partnership (PPP) in the sector. The meet, called by the Planning Commission, will be the first such of the UPA government, which had promised to deliver on the infrastructure front.

Planning Commission deputy chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia said states have on their own taken up some projects, while the Centre is also pushing for PPP projects in the infrastructure sector. He said this would therefore be the right platform to work out a common policy for developing infrastructure projects in the country. At the meet, a set of recently finalised policies would be given to representatives of the states.

The meet is expected to be crucial for the highways sector, as issues that have hampered completion of some of programmes of the National Highways Development Project are likely to be taken up with the states. The meet on the highways sector will be chaired by Cabinet Secretary B K Chaturvedi. Sources said, the issue of increasing manpower for hastening land acquisition in states could be one of the important points discussed with state officials.

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In the past, NHAI projects have been delayed as governments failed to depute staff and officers to complete land acquisition in time. Sources said lessons from building national highways would be passed on for building state and rural roads.

On airports, sources said the Centre could be willing to consider higher FDI limits for modernising the existing airports including those at Chennai and Kolkata. Finance Minister P Chidambaram is the only Cabinet minister scheduled to attend the meet. However MoS in the PMO Prithviraj Chauhan is expected to chair some of the sessions.

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