Infrastructure

The infrastructure industry is undergoing metamorphosis and is a critical elicitor to economic growth of India.

Eloquent modifications are beheld in the infrastructure sector over the last decade since the commencement of the liberalization process and opening up foreign direct investment, modal policy and the way forward to move from strategy to implementation.

India’s diverse and complex geographic conditions, poor infrastructure, complex tax policies and supply constraints are inherited inefficiencies and at the same time India’s infrastructure story continues to be attractive based on its rapidly growing economy, rising trade, greater outsourcing, significant government thrust on investment in infrastructure and landmark changes in tax and regulatory policies.

Government of India has set an ambitious target of investing about USD 1 trillion in the XII Five Year plan (2012-17) against USD 500 billion in the XI Five year Plan (2007-12) for infrastructure development and around 25% of this investment is expected to be in the area of roads, railways, airports and seaport projects.

Launching the ambitious National Highway Development Program which has seven phases and is expected to be completed by 2012 which includes improved connectivity between Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai and Kolkata called as the Golden Quadrilateral, in the first phase, North- South and East- West corridors in phase two, four laning of more than 12,000 km in phase three, two laning of 20,000 km and six laning of 6,500 km respectively in phase four and five, development of 1,000 km of expressway in phase six and other important highway projects in phase seven with total expected investment of INR 2,2 trillion.

India has the second largest road network with 3,5 million kilometers of roads in the world and stands to ist strong commitment to invest in the infrastructure and targets to build 20 km of roads on daily basis and invest USD 60 billion in road projects in coming five years.

Indian Railways is one of the largest railways under single management and it carried some 19,8 million passengers and 2,5 million tonnes of freight a day in year 2009 and is one of the world’s largest employer. The railways play a leading role in carrying passengers and cargo across India’s vast territory but most of its major corridors have capacity constraint which requires capacity enhancement and investment plans to improve railway infrastructure of the country.

The ports in india have capacity of 600 million mega tonnes and are running at about 95% utilisation and demand is likely to grow to 1000 million mega tonnes by 2015.

Urban centers in India are severely congested and in all metropolitan centers, roads are often awfully crowded during the rush hours and dramatic growth in vehicle ownership during the past decade has led to lack of timely bound deliveries.

International Finance Corporation, the private sector funding arm of the World Bank Group, plans to invest up to $1 billion in infrastructure and across many other sectors in 2011-12.