India is the second most populous country in the world and has an approximate average GDP growth rate of 6.5%. To sustain this growth, India needs to ascertain certain developmental goals. Goals which shall translate into prosperity to the nation. History has it written that a nation can only excel with unabridged Infrastructure capacity. India is largely a growing economy and hence requires to upgrade its basic infrastructure facilities at the speed of light! Indian economy pumps roughly around 9% of its GDP earning into Infrastructure development. Eleventh five year plan boasted of nearly 25% of the total infrastructure spending through the Private investments as well as Private Finance Initiatives (PFI). Flying high on the success of PPP projects, the twelfth five year plan is expected to infuse Infrastructure investment to the tune of 50% of the total requirement through Private investors.

With such large scale investments in the foray, a certain apprehension persists in the minds of the Private investor. issues relating to Land acquisition, Environment and Forest clearances, Improper risk allocation, lack of technology adeptness and so on. These  issues need to be resolved on priority basis with a proper transparent system to be accounted for. Adversely, a study reveals that nearly 53% of the Infrastructure projects in India are behind their original scheduled completion date with a 17% overrun in costs of the same. This implies that a cost escalation of INR 17,000 Crores will be incurred on a project with original completion cost of INR 1,00,000 Crores!

Does this convey a optimistic message to the plethora of Private investors? Will the situation in the Governance system improve with the advent of improvised single window clearance? How can global best practices be replicated in order to achieve higher efficiency and an increased Value For Money (VFM)?

The link below (PPP India’s future) is a technical paper submitted for review for the Project Management Institute (PMI) USA Academic and Research conference to be held at IIT Madras in January 2013.

PPP India’s future Click to open the .pdf file

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The author of this article has also published technical paper titled “Augmenting PPP in Infrastructure Projects through Project Management and Accountable Governance in India” at the PMI National conference held in Bangalore 2011. Augmenting PPP in Infrastructure Projects – Click to open the .pdf file