Odisha will be benefitted in a big way from the Union Government’s target to invest Rs 100 lakh crore by 2024-25 financial year.
To achieve the target, a task force chaired by Secretary Department of Economic Affairs has been constituted to draw up the National Infrastructure Pipeline (NIP) from 2019-20 financial year to 2024-25, said officials.
The task force had deliberations with different stakeholders, including Ministries, State Governments, infrastructure companies, developers, bankers, NBFCs, and industry associations in drawing up the NIP over the last four months, said Union Secretary Economic Affairs Atanu Chakraborty.
In the meantime, the Ministry of Finance has released the summary of the report of the task force on NIP for FY 2019-2025 with recommendations on certain generic reforms, he said.
The task force in its detailed report will provide its recommendations on changes required to several key sectoral policies and other reform initiatives by the Central and State Governments soon, he added.
Notably, the NIP is a co-operative effort of all the Ministries/Departments of Union Government, States and the private sector.
Chakraborty said an action plan had been chalked out to accomplish the ambitious target of infrastructure investment in the next five years.
Also a Ministry level task force may be constituted to plan, prepare, bid, implement and monitor NIP projects for effective implementation within sanctioned cost and time, the Union Secretary said.
The Union Government has suggested putting a robust monitoring framework in place with escalation matrix to companies depending on the size, delay and complexity of unresolved issues.
The Centre has also advised to prepare an annual supplementary NIP report by March every year to update NIP with additional information provided by various Ministries, States and private sector, Chakroborty said.
In order to achieve the target, creating an enabling environment through optimal risk sharing, balanced PPP contracts by ensuring sanctity of contracts and enabling timely and efficient dispute resolution has been stressed.
The Union Government plans to showcase the NIP projects at all fora, including the Annual Global Investors Meet, expected to be organised in the second half of 2020, where top global investors will get to look at infrastructure opportunities, said sources. It has advised to take speedy action on the issues so that infrastructure development can spur the growth of the Indian economy.
The State Government’s flagship Make in Odisha programme, during which the State Government intends to attract huge investments, will also help the Centre in achieving the target, officials said.
These officials said that Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DIPP) was extending all support to the State.
DIPP Secretary Guru Prasad Mahapatra was in touch with the State Government. Industries and MSME Secretary Hemant Sharma was coordinating the efforts to attract huge investment to the state, the sources informed.
