Prime Minister to chair bank chief meet on infrastructure

Aiming to aggressively push the infrastructure sector, mainly by building highways, Prime Minister Narendra Modi will hold a meeting with banks heads and other financial institutions soon to take a stock of flow of funds to the sector and build confidence in investors.

With the NDA government completing one year in office, the Road Transport and Highway Ministry is working on innovative funding plans to raise over Rs 3 lakh crore to give a fillip to the road sector. As most of these projects will be awarded through the PPP or EPC (engineering, procurement and construction) models in the next six months, the government is doing confidence building measures among investors to attract funds, an official from the Ministry told Deccan Herald.

As the Road Transport Ministry is keen on selling major road projects to pension funds, insurance funds and foreign investors to raise funds, the meeting will discuss about giving government  guarantee to creditors, sources said. The meeting will be attended by Finance Minister Arun Jaitley and Road Transport Minister Nitin Gadkari.

The government’s efforts comes at a time when domestic investors are reluctant to invest in the road sector, due to increasing debt and the failure of the government to ensure availability of land.