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India may miss infra targets for roads, ports
Reuters
Last Updated IST
A labourer works at the construction site of a flyover in Chennai in this February.  file photo. Reuters
A labourer works at the construction site of a flyover in Chennai in this February. file photo. Reuters

The country's railways may miss investment target by 23 percent and ports may miss it by 53 percent in the 2007-12 plan period, while it may take more than two years for the government to meet its 20 kilometres per day road construction target, Haldea told Reuters in an interview.

"There have been serious shortfalls in ports but most of the shortfalls have been in central government-owned ports. They could not succeed in attracting the private investment that they had set out to achieve," Haldea said.

India hopes to spend $500 billion in building up its infrastructure between 2007-08 and 2011-12, to help propel Asia's third largest economy's growth to double digits.

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But the country has consistently missed out on its targets to build roads, ports and power plants, and experts say the poor infrastructure shaves off up to 2 percentage points from its annual growth.

India will take at least another two years to meet its road construction target as its highway authority had not awarded enough contracts in the past three years, Haldea said.

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(Published 22 July 2010, 08:31 IST)