News Detail

Eighty-one power projects worth INR 3.20 lakh crore have taken off in the past ten months and materialised into actual investments on the ground giving hope for an economic revival in the country, according to data available with the Project Monitoring Group of the Central Secretariat. The authority is now looking to facilitate investments in 212 projects worth INR 10.57 lakh crore while no action is expected to be taken in 58 projects, which have been held up due to litigation.

Power sector alone contributed to 98 Percent of the actual investment of INR 3.35 lakh crore in the economy while the remaining is contributed by the coal and petroleum sector. The PMG currently has details of 113 of the 153 projects that it helped to clear in the past ten months. So far, investment worth INR 3.25 lakh crore have been invested against planned investments of INR 3.66 lakh crore. The PMG has cleared 153 projects worth INR 5.2 lakh crore since it came into being in June last year.

"As far as 58 projects are concerned, they are held up due to various reasons such as court cases and other disputes and there is nothing much that the PMG can do about that. As far as the actual investments go, a lot of investments had already happened and some more investments were held up due to some clearance issues which we have been able to address", Anil Swarup, Head of the PMG said.

The 58 projects are worth INR 4.5 lakh crore and a large number of them are sub judice. The total value of projects accepted by PMG currently stands at INR 21.63 lakh crore as of April. While power sector saw the maximum investment taking place, giving hopes to address concerns of power shortage in the country, Petroleum and coal sectors also saw substantial investments in the past ten months. Actual investments in the petroleum sector stood at INR 2,634.14 crore while in the coal sector the amount stood at INR 9,732.34 crore.

"The PMG has been instrumental in ensuring the clearance and these clearances have helped in moving a number of projects. But at the ground level there is a lot of work that needs to happen and projects are yet to take off. The power sector has been grappling with bad assets since the past few years", said Vishwas Udgirkar, Senior Director at Deloitte said.

According to PMG, states such as Orissa and Chattisgarh lead other states in the number of projects to be set up in the country and include investments in Power, Roads, mines and Petroleum and Natural gases. The project monitoring group was set up last year by the Prime Minister to monitor and fast track clearances for infrastructure projects which require investment more than INR 1,000 crore.

While the authority has so far facilitated clearance to more than 91 projects in the power sector, it has also been able to fast track investments in seven road projects and 6 shipping projects. Apart from Power sector where projects worth INR 9.3 lakh crore have been accepted by the PMG, Steel projects worth INR 4.9 lakh crore are also pending before the PMG.

Source-On Request