By IANS,
New Delhi : India is not meeting its infrastructure development targets and needs to rework its strategy of implementing mega projects, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said here Saturday while addressing the country’s top policy forum.
“The state of infrastructure in the country is not good enough to achieve 9-10 percent growth over a sustained basis. We need to do much more in future,” said Manmohan Singh while addressing a meeting of the National Development Council (NDC).
The country plans to double its investment in the infrastructure sector between 2012-2017 to $1 trillion, which is approximately the size of its current Gross Domestic Product.
Infrastructure development is among the primary issues on the agenda of the NDC meeting, which is being attended by all chief ministers, members of the Planning Commission and key members of the central cabinet.
The prime minister said while some progress had been made in projects through the public-private partnership route, there was need to remodel the way infrastructure development contracts were awarded.
“We also need to improve the terms and conditions on which PPP projects are awarded to ensure that the process is transparent, bidding is competitive and public interest is adequately safeguarded.”