In India, private participation in infrastructure programmes supports several PPP models, including management contracts like Build-Operate-Transfer (BOT), Design-Build-Finance -Operate-Transfer (DBFOT), Rehabilitate-Operate-Transfer (ROT), Hybrid Annuity Model (HAM), and Toll-Operate-Transfer (TOT) model.
The Public Private Partnership Appraisal Committee (PPPAC), the apex body for appraisal of PPP projects in the Central Sector has streamlined appraisal mechanism to ensure speedy appraisal of projects, eliminate delays, adopt international best practices and have uniformity in appraisal mechanism and guidelines.
To provide financial assistance to financially unviable but socially/ economically desirable PPP projects, DEA launched the Viability Gap Funding (VGF) scheme in 2006.
A scheme for financial support for project development expenses of PPP Projects – the ‘India Infrastructure Project Development Fund Scheme’ (IIPDF) – was notified by the government on 3 November 2022.
NIP
In view of this, the government launched the National Infrastructure Pipeline (NIP) with a forward-looking approach and with a projected infrastructure investment of around Rs. 111 lakh crore during FY20-25 to provide high quality infrastructure across the country.
NMP
The National Monetisation Pipeline (NMP) was thus announced on 23 August 2021. Based on the principle of ‘asset creation through monetisation’, it taps private sector investment for new infrastructure creation.
NLP
Logistics costs in India have been in the range of 14-18 per cent of GDP against the global benchmark of 8 per cent.
Many efforts have already been made by the Government of India to improve the logistics ecosystem through ‘infrastructure initiatives’ such as Ude Desh ka Aam Nagrik (UDAN), Bharatmala, Sagarmala, Parvatamala, National Rail Plan, and through ‘process reforms’ GST, e-Sanchit, Single Window Interface for Trade (SWIFT), Indian Customs Electronic Data Interchange Gateway (ICEGATE), Turant Customs, and others.
NLP was launched on 17 September 2022. The vision of the NLP is “to develop a technologically enabled, integrated, cost-efficient, resilient, sustainable and trusted logistics ecosystem in the country for accelerated and inclusive growth.”
Road
There has been an increase in the construction of National Highways (NHs)/roads over time, with 10,457 km of roads constructed in FY22 as compared to 6,061 km in FY16.
In line with the vision of monetisation of public sector assets, National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) launched its InvIT in FY22 not only to facilitate monetisation of roads but also to attract foreign and domestic institutional investors to invest in the roads sector.
Railway
Passenger traffic originating in IR was 809 crore during pre-Covid-19 period (2019-20), but dipped to 125 crore in 2020-21. It has since recovered to 351.9 crore in 2021-22.
Freight traffic was sustained by IR despite the Covid-19 shock. Between FY20-21 and FY21-22, there was a sharp increase in the freight traffic, reflecting the strong revival in the economic activity in the domestic economy.
Air
While in FY21, there was a considerable decline in the air-traffic (a decline of 54 per cent) as well as passenger traffic handled (a decline of 66 per cent), FY22 saw a recovery, mainly led by the domestic sector.
The current financial year has further shown a rebound, with both passenger and cargo movement close to the pre-Covid-19 levels.
Ports
The capacity of major ports, which was 871.5 Million Tonnes Per Annum (MTPA) at the end of March 2014, has increased to 1534.9 MTPA by the end of March 2022. Cumulatively they handled 720.1 MT traffic during FY22.
For streamlining the port compliances and for reducing the Turn Around Time for (TAT) for vessels, long strides have been taken at the major ports towards the digitisation of key EXIM processes.
The Port Community System (PCS 1x) has digitised processes such as Electronic Invoice (e-Invoice), Electronic Payment (e-Payment) and Electronic Delivery Order (e-DO) for the physical release of cargo by custodians, in addition to the processes of generating electronic Bill of Lading (e-BL) and Letter of Credit (LC).
Inland
Under the National Waterways Act 2016, 106 new waterways have been declared as National Waterways (NWs), taking the total number of NWs in the country to 111.
Further, to promote the use of inland waterways, waterway usage charges levied by the Inland Waterways Authority of India (IWAI) on vessels moving on NWs were waived in July 2020, initially for a period of three years. The cargo movement on National Waterways achieved an all-time high of 108.8 million tons during FY22, recording 30.1 per cent growth compared to the previous year.
The Inland Vessels Bill 2021, which replaced the over 100 year-old Inland Vessels Act, 1917 (Act No.1 of 1917), was passed by the Parliament in August 2021.
This will usher in a new era for inland water transport sector and fulfil the vision to utilise the potential of multi-modal transport ecosystem while making the legislative framework user-friendly and promoting ease of doing business.
Digital Infrastructure
This was substantiated by the then-existing digital divide seen from tele density (number of subscribers per 100 inhabitants) in rural and urban areas being 44.01 and 145.46 respectively in 2014.
More internet subscribers in rural areas in the last 3 years (2019-21) than in their urban counterparts (95.76 million vis-a-vis 92.81 million in rural and urban areas respectively).
This has been a result of dedicated digital drives across rural areas through ambitious government schemes, like the flagship BharatNet Project Scheme, Telecom Development Plan, Aspirational District Scheme, initiatives in North-Eastern Region through Comprehensive Telecom Development Plan (CTDP) and initiatives towards areas affected by Left Wing Extremism (LWE), etc.
The Submarine OFC connectivity from Chennai to Andaman & Nicobar Islands (CANI) project was launched to connect Port Blair and seven other islands of Andaman & Nicobar Islands with Chennai through 2,313 km of underwater OFC.
The Submarine OFC connectivity from Kochi to Lakshadweep Islands (KLI) project was launched to connect Kochi with Kavaratti and ten other islands of Lakshadweep through 1869 kms of underwater OFC project, and the project is likely to be completed by May 2023.
5G
A landmark achievement in telecommunications in India was the launch of 5G services. 5G could impact consumers directly through higher data transfer speeds and lower latency.
5G use cases developed by Telecom Service Providers and start-ups in education, health, worker safety, smart agriculture etc., are now being deployed across the country.
E governance
To reduce the search cost for the commoners, the government launched Unified Mobile Application for New-Age Governance (UMANG), which enables citizens to access e-Government services offered by the Central and State Government in various sectors such as agriculture, education, health, housing, employees, pensioners, and students’ welfare, the Public Distribution System, and others.
AI
The national AI portal has been developed with a view to strengthening the AI ecosystem in the country by pooling together and highlighting the latest developments happening in Central and State Governments, industry, academia, NGOs, and civil societies.
In a country such as India, with its unmatched linguistic and cultural diversity, AI has great potential as a tool for overcoming the language barrier.
‘Bhashini’, the National Language Translation Mission, aiming at nurturing Indian language technologies and solutions as a public good, was launched in July 2022.
The Digital India Bhashini portal is a public digital platform on which 260 open-source API-based AI models are available for speech-to-text conversion, machine translation, and text-to-speech conversion in 11 Indian languages and English for various purposes.
Bhashini has great potential to bring access to the internet and other digital resources to millions of Indians in their own languages.
