Washington: PM Narendra Modi is expected to seek longterm funds for India’s $1 trillion infrastructure development plans when he meets President Barack Obama and some of the world’s top financiers and investors including Goldman Sachs, GE, IBM and Boeing, and private equity firms such as Blackrock and KKR.
Modi is likely to present a starkly different picture of India on his maiden visit to the United States as prime minister than his predecessor Manmohan Singh did a year ago, officials said. Instead of lamenting about India’s decrepit infrastructure, Modi is likely to talk about his comprehensive plans to spruce up the poor infrastructure and logistics that investors consider among the biggest deterrents for setting up shop in the country.
This is a critical but unstated element of the PM’s invitation to the world to ‘Make in India’, unveiled before he left for his five-day visit to the US on Thursday, for manufacturing in India will be no good if the final product takes weeks to leave the country’s shores for global markets.
According to top government officials, the PM’s tough taskmaster approach has already managed to significantly change the outlook for most infrastructure sectors after three years of sluggish growth under the previous UPA government. These improvements have significantly taken place without any surge in investments from domestic private sector infrastructure players, most of whom are cash-strapped and struggling with legacy investments, officials said.
Take the highways sector, for instance, which had virtually ground to a halt with private investors abandoning projects and walking away in recent years. Taking a tough call to halt all public-private partnerships till private investors have repaired their balance sheets, the Moiled NDA government has managed to award contracts to build 1,860 km of new highways in the first five months of this year – almost 60% of the road length for which the UPA awarded contracts in all of 2013-14. Moreover, during this period 1,512 km or more than a third of new highways constructed in the entire previous fiscal were completed.
India produced 221 million tonnes of coal in the first five months of the current fiscal, or about 39% of the 566 million tonnes achieved in the entire last fiscal. Port projects worth Rs 4,200 crore have been awarded under the new government while five ongoing projects have been completed, boosting India’s export-import capacity for goods by over 30 mtpa.
In what would mark a major breakthrough for moving goods faster, the government is set to commence operations in a part of the Eastern Dedicated Freight Corridor between Mughalsarai and Sonnagar by March 2015.
By March 2015, about 1,500 new telecom towers will be operational and mobile connectivity extended to remote parts that are currently off the telecom grid such as uncovered villages in Himalayan states and districts affected by Left-wing extremism.
Bureau report
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