Setting up of a national infrastructure facilitating and monitoring agency on the lines of Foreign Investment Promotion Board (FIPB), independent regulators for each sub-sectors, separate budget for infrastructure sector, adoption of 20 cross-sector projects for the timely completion, forming land bank corporation are some of the 12-point key proposals, the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) will be placing before the Centre in order to fast-track the infrastructure projects through public-private partnership (PPP) mode.
Addressing the media at the CII summit on infrastructure (Siminfra 2009) here JP Nayak, chairman, Suminfra said,
?In every area where human interaction takes place there should be monitoring agency, hence in PPP we need a facilitating and monitoring agency, most probably on the lines of FIPB.?
With a view to give more thrust to infrastructure spending, CII has proposed the government to present a separate infrastructure budget. ?If government can present a separate railway budget, why can?t it have budget exclusively for infra sector,? said Nayak. Since infrastructure projects need huge investment proper earmarking and allocation of funds are of paramount importance, he said.
Asserting that land acquisition was still the single largest problem faced by the infrastructure developers, he said due to non-availability of the land on time, projects are getting delayed, which in turn causes cost over-runs. To address the issue of land acquisition, CII is seeking setting up of a land bank corporation, which can facilitate hassle-free land acquisition by identifying specific lands ahead of announcement of the projects, thus by minimising bargaining power of the landlords.
?Project delays adversely effect expected benefits from the projects and this should be avoided,? he said.