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Journalism of Courage
With key infrastructure projects hanging fire,the Prime Ministers Office (PMO) has convened a meeting on Friday to comprehensively review the projects totalling an investment of nearly Rs 3 lakh crore including big-ticket airport and freight corridor projects.
The meeting on July 19 comes close on the heels of Singh chairing a review meeting to iron out the bottlenecks impeding implementation of mega infrastructure projects on June 28. In that meeting the Prime Minister had emphasised that adequate efforts need to be made for ramping up investment in the infrastructure sector to revive sagging investor sentiment.
The meeting on Friday would be chaired by principal secretary to the Prime Minister,Pulok Chatterji and attended by secretaries in the departments and ministries of economic affairs,road transport and highways,shipping,civil aviation and power and officials from the railway board. The discussions are expected to be centered on award of various projects with an estimated investment of Rs 1 lakh crore.
The PMO has already set a target of creating a capacity of 292 million tonnes per annum (MTPA) in the ports sector for 2013-14 at an envisaged of Rs 24,681 crore.
Similarly for the roads sector the PMO has asked the ministry of highways to award contracts of for 5,000 km with a window to ramp up the capacity to 9,600 km depending on the response to build-operate-transfer projects.
A source in the PMO said that two major railway locomotive projects,which have not made much headway at Madhepura and Marhowra in Bihar would be discussed threadbare and an inter-ministerial group constituted to expedite the stranded railroad projects is expected to furnish a blueprint with a creative financing and implementation mechanism for executing projects with an estimated investment of Rs 2 lakh crore in a prioritised manner.
Other projects expected to get a fillip include the Mumbai Elevated Rail Corridor and Eastern Dedicated Freight Corridor. In the civil aviation sector of the eight greenfield airport to be awarded at least two would be prioritised besides considering to build two international airports at Imphal and Bhubaneswar.
In the power sector,the PMO is expected to press for implementation of projects to produce 2,000 MW of nuclear power besides asking for expediting execution of high voltage transmission lines.
