In a bid to mop up huge resources for developing infrastructure in the state, chief minister Akhilesh Yadav has given clear instructions to his officers that the investor fraternity needs to be wooed aggressively and a transparent, level playing field needs to be provided to a wider array to business houses for investing in the state, especially for those incomplete projects on which substantial legwork has already been done in the last regime.
Talking to FE, the newly appointed Infrastructure and Industrial Development Commissioner (IIDC), Anil Kumar Gupta said, ?Building infrastructure is the need of the hour and the role of the government will be that of a facilitator. We will do all that needs to be done to attract business houses and make them feel safe and comfortable,? he said, adding that this can happen only when there is a win-win situation for both the government and the business houses.
?Infrastructure projects that need to be pursued include roads, airports, hotels and super-speciality medical units,? said Gupta, adding that mega projects like the Kushinagar Airport and Upper Ganga Canal Expressway and power projects, on which substantial legwork has already been done, are extremely essential for the development of the state.
?We need to work on the right revenue models and financial viability of these projects so that they become attractive for the developers to invest in,? he said.
It may be mentioned that these two infrastructure projects were being pursued by the previous Mayawati government aggressively, but they failed to take off due to financial issues.
In fact, the desire of the previous Mayawati government to mop up R6 lakh crore during the 11th Five Year Plan could meet a limited success only because mega projects failed to take off.
?Despite starting off on a professional note, such as strictly following the Centre?s PPP guidelines, by inviting top transaction advisors and consultants and by adopting the right procedures, all the government?s efforts ended up in a near fiasco, with just a couple of business houses claiming the centre stage in the state?s development. In this backdrop, if the new government is reiterating its earnest desire to upgrade infrastructure in both air and surface transport, it is also likely to come out with some policy initiative to ensure a strategic partnership with the private sector for a long-term professional outcome in core areas of infrastructure and service delivery,? opined a senior official of the state government.
In fact, some of the previous government?s ambitious projects which will be highly ?watched out? for are the network of expressways that are said to provide connectivity to the interior-most corners of the huge state ? the Ghaziabad-Saharanpur-Dehradun Expressway on river Hindon, the Jhansi-Kanpur-Lucknow-Gorakhpur-Kushinagar Expressway, the Agra-Kanpur Expressway on river Yamuna, among others.