NEW DELHI, June 13: Prime Minister Manmohan Singh today set up a Project Monitoring Group to track large investment projects.
The decision to set up the group was taken earlier this month at a meeting chaired by the Prime Minister to discuss an institutional mechanism to track stalled investment projects, both in the public and private sectors and to remove implementation bottlenecks in these projects on a fast-track basis.
The Prime Minister today directed that a special cell be created immediately in the Cabinet Secretariat.
“This cell would be in the nature of a project monitoring group for all large projects, both public and private and would pro-actively pursue them so that these investment projects are commissioned on time,” the Prime Minister’s Office said here.
Suitable officers may be identified at the earliest and priority projects may be quickly identified to be taken for tracking.
The administrative ministries, in consultation with the Finance Ministry, and the Finance Ministry on its own also were tasked with the identification of such priority projects. The Cabinet Secretariat was asked to hold a meeting with Chief Secretaries of states to have state governments on board with this new mechanism.
Union Finance Minister P Chidambaram told the meeting that his Ministry had compiled a list of about 215 such projects, where the banks had already funded more than Rs 7 lakh crore. The time and cost overruns being faced by these projects had also been documented, as well as the action required to remove the implementation bottlenecks.
While some of bottlenecks being faced were in the domain of regulatory authorities at the Central level, a large number of impediments were those that lie in the domain of state governments and local bodies.
He, therefore, flagged the need for having an institutional mechanism which has sufficient authority, to coordinate with the authorities concerned and get these projects moving on the ground.
Commerce Minister Anand Sharma said his ministry had done a compilation of projects in the manufacturing sector, which were stalled due to various inter-agency bottlenecks. He also emphasised the need to sensitise the state governments in order to elicit their cooperation.
Coal Minister Sriprakash Jaiswal and Road Transport and Highways Minister C P Joshi welcomed the proposal to have such a coordination mechanism for investment projects.
Power Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia agreed with the need to have a project management group at the apex level which would champion investment projects, both in public and private sectors. (UNI)
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