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Journalism of Courage
Less than a decade ago,the infusion of private sector efficiency and project management skills was widely hailed as the panacea for turning around the all-pervasive slack visible in the execution of infrastructure projects. The situation on the ground,though,across most core sector shows that the private sector story is progressively turning sour,partly on account of bureaucratic apathy.
In the coal sector,where desperate attempts to supplement the efforts of state-owned coal firms have been underway amid a worsening domestic availability situation,the private sectors track record in developing mines is probably the most dismal. Of the 195-odd blocks allotted for captive consumption,excluding the 39 blocks allocated to public sector utilities for commercial use,less than 25 mines have been developed. Slow progress includes blocks developed by private biggies such as Hindalco Industries and Tata Power Ltd,Adani Power and an Arcelor Mittal- GVK Power combine.
Apart from these projects,over 32,000 MW of upcoming coal-fired thermal power generation capacity being set up by private developers,most of them first-time developers,has either been shelved or simply put on hold until June this year.
The new-found enthusiasm among private developers is evaporating. By the next Plan beyond 2012,there will hardly be any players interested in setting up power projects,the way things are going, a Central Electricity Authority official said.
In the roads sector,which has had the largest number of the public-private-partnership PPP projects among infrastructure projects,the situation is less than encouraging. A recent research project at IIT Chennai,which studied the trends in cost and time overruns in road projects in India based on data from national highways,concludes that PPPs actually end up costing the exchequer more than non-PPP road projects. The study shows that 88.1 per cent of PPPs had cost overruns as compared with 54.37 per cent in non-PPP projects.
In the shipping sector too,the private sector story is dismal. Against the target of 21 PPP/Captive Projects earmarked for the year 2010-11,only nine projects were awarded till October 2011,of which five were carry forward projects from the previous year Quarterly targets have now been fixed for implementation of PPP projects and dredging activities in all the major ports in the country to tackle delays, a government official said.
