Union Finance Minister P Chidambaram, on Monday stressed the need to step up investments urgently in ports, roads and power generation. He pointed out India needs about $475 billion between 2007 and 2012 to upgrade, expand and modernise infrastructure sector. Chidambaram, who was speaking at the Indo-US CEO Forum here, even though India had averaged the growth of 8.6 per cent over the last four years, it has still left key roads, ports and airports choked with traffic.

The Finance Minister also said that overseas borrowing for the development of infrastructure should be made more flexible envisaging relaxation in the external commercial borrowing (ECB) norms. 

Observing that financing infrastructure is a major challenge, Mr Chidambaram said, “Infrastructure financing is major challenge. We have identified some steps that have to be taken. Firstly, ECB norms for infrastructure must be made more flexible, pension and insurance funds need to invest more in infrastructure and its guidelines would have to be revisited and above all a broad, deep and active corporate bond market.”

The Finance Minister is also believes that the country’s strong economic expansion could be at risk if infrastructure investment is not substantially raised.

Chidambaram also noted that the overseas borrowing rules for port, road, power and airport projects should be made more flexible so that private entrepreneurs could access cheaper funds.