Held-up infra projects worth Rs 25K cr cleared

Move likely to take stress off banks that have lent huge amounts to corporates for the projects

The government on Friday cleared three infrastructure projects worth Rs 25,000 crore for implementation that were held up pending clearances. The move is likely to take some stress off banks,which have lent huge amounts to corporates for these projects. As many as 24 projects were awaiting clearance of which three were cleared.

The government should take steps to see that clearances of projects is fast-tracked. So in the first meeting that was taken by finance minister Pranab Mukherjee on October 18,12 projects of Rs 1.7 lakh crore were discussed8230; In todays meeting we discussed 12 projects of Rs 37,000 crore. Three have been cleared for implementation, D K Mittal,secretary,department of financial services said.

The three projects that have been cleared are Hinduja National Power Corporation held up due to Foreign Investment Promotion Board,Lamp;T Metro Rail,Hyderabad,worth over Rs 16,000 crore and Simhapuri Expressways,worth over Rs 2,000 crore.

Earlier,a committee was set up to review the projects in which public sector banks have lent more than Rs 100 crore. This was the second meeting of the committee.

Mittal said that the government will work towards granting clearances to the rest of the projects before the next meeting takes place.

The clearances come amid Moodys downgrade of the banking sector and an RBI report stating that Indian banks need to step up efforts to resolve their bad loans and tighten credit risk management systems.

We are doing this because money of our financial institutions is invested here. If those projects dont take off then it will become Non Performing Asset in bank, Mittal said.

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He said that in the last meeting projects above Rs 5,000 crore were discussed while in todays meeting,projects between Rs 1,500 crore and Rs 5,000 crore were discussed.

The third meeting likely to be held in the next month will discuss 18 projects between Rs 1,000-1,500 crore.

The secretary said the bank sanction is already available for these projects and they have been held up due to lack of clearances from the environment ministry,coal ministry and the FIPB.