Corporates in debt trap: According to a new report, Indian corporates’ debt pile-up has risen 10 times from FY02 to FY14. In such a scenario, reducing the debt-to-equity ratio from the current 1.34 to a more manageable 1.2 means that companies will need to raise $80-90 billion.
Tweet: Std Chartered Report: Most corporates are not in any position to take up large investments any more. Debt pile-up intractable in short term.
Waterways Bill—balancing Centre-state jurisdiction: The government decision to reduce traffic burden on roads and railways has led to the introduction of its riverine policy. With rivers, creeks, canals and other waterways comprising nearly 14,500 km, there is a huge unexploited potential for this mode of transport.
Tweet: With Rivers a State subject—Centre treads cautiously on 101 National Waterways Bill. Usage of water, land & minerals to remain with state.
SEZs—Maharashtra government cracks the whip: The proposed Bill aims at getting back unused land that developers had acquired across the state for building SEZs. This will enable the government to reallocate the land for affordable housing schemes.
Tweet: Breakthrough legislation: Maharashtra plans to introduce “SEZ Prevention of Land Speculation Bill” to potentially free up 25,000 acres!
Maharashtra for multiple discoms: Over the years, many states have resorted to setting up multiple discoms to focus on smaller geographies and reduce T&D losses. Maharashtra is now set to adopt this model.
Tweet: Maha now to join trend of having multiple Discoms in a state. Mahavitaran to be hived off into 5 standalone entities for better performance.
Toll revenue growth cause for cheer: Even as 62 toll plazas on the national highways were scrapped in order to benefit ease of traffic movement, overall revenues have gone up due to inflation-indexed increase in toll rates, growth in commercial traffic and new toll roads having started operations.
Tweet: Toll collection in fiscal 2014-15 at R14,215 ^ by healthy 24% over last year. Would be useful to know breakup between rate & traffic ^.
Pitching for a smart grid: An outlay of R980 crore has been approved for setting up of the National Smart Grid Mission, which will focus on planning, monitoring, and implementing policies and programmes related to power generation and consumption.
Tweet: Govt approves National Smart Grid Mission. Good. But what’s happening to Discom reforms? & the R2 lac cr bailout? Have we given up on them!?
Harnessing administration skills of bureaucrats: The government has attempted an interesting administrative innovation by creating groups of top-level secretaries to oversee projects, programmes and initiatives to enable them to bring in valuable perspective from their long years of experience.
Tweet: Out-of-box Babus for out-of-box thinking. Top Secys to Govt positioned in matrix groups to oversee initiatives outside their own ministries.
Mumbai Port to give up land for city redevelopment: Transport minister Nitin Gadkari’s announcement has come as a major boon for the state government as it struggles to cope with ways to provide affordable housing and open green spaces to the city’s massive population.
Tweet: Co-operative Federalism: Gadkari promises to hand over 350 acres of land owned by Mumbai Port Trust (under Central govt) to state govt.
—Vinayak Chatterjee is Chairman of Feedback Infra
His Twitter handle: @Infra_VinayakCh
A weekly selection of the author’s tweets—with a brief backgrounder—in the infra space, by Adite Banerjie
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