The commission will submit a report to Prime Minister in the first week of December recommending higher influx of public funds in infrastructure projects through PPP mode.
The day Planning Commission Deputy Chairperson Montek Singh Ahluwalia said the growth could be as low as seven per cent, a plan to usher more public money into key infrastructure sectors like road, real estate and irrigation was unveiled.
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The commission will submit a report to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in the first week of December recommending higher influx of public funds in infrastructure projects through public private partnership (PPP) mode.
“We have identified the sectors where public expenditure can be expanded so that lack of finance due to economic meltdown does not create development difficulties,” said Subhas Pani, planning secretary, who is a member of a high-level committee to recommend higher government finances for infrastructure sector.
It would mean putting higher government participation in PPP projects, Pani said, while refusing to divulge the amount of money the government was willing to invest in the infrastructure sector.
The commission believes that global economic meltdown leading to slowing down of private investment can adversely impact India’s infrastructure project, which are not progressing at the anticipated pace. About 80 major highway projects are running behind schedule and targets on rural housing and irrigation are unlikely to be met.
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“We are heading for major expansion in infrastructure in private and public sector,” said Ahluwalia. “We have to take measures to prevent impact of global economic meltdown on them.”
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“We are heading for major expansion in infrastructure in private and public sector,” said Ahluwalia. “We have to take measures to prevent impact of global economic meltdown on them.”
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On the growth front, Ahluwalia said they were planning for 7 per cent economic growth rate in the current fiscal. He said the fall in the growth rate as interruption that may get corrected in the latter half of next year. “At this stage, we are not revising our growth target of nine per cent of the 11th plan,” he said.
He also hoped that inflation, which came down to 8.9 per cent, would decline further giving the Reserve Bank of India a leeway to go for softening interest rates to spur growth. “Inflation would come down further. This gives us greater flexibility in monetary policy. Infusion of liquidity would ease interest rates," he said.
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.
