The 42-km Thiruvananthapuram City Road Improvement Project (TCRIP) that has given a world-class road corridor to the State capital is to be showcased in the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) meet on People First Public Private Partnerships (PPPs) in Bangkok.
The TCRIP is the only PPP project from the country and from the roads sector in the world to make it to the meet to be held at the United Nations Conference Centre at Bangkok on September 23.
The Rs.450-crore project, which altered development of road infrastructure and is being replicated in key district headquarters, made it to the meet in Thailand for “demonstrating good governance and achieving the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development Goals.”
Anil Kumar Pandala, the Project Director, Thiruvananthapuram Road Development Company Ltd (TRDCL), the concessionaire that executed the TCRIP, will present the project along with the ones from Armenia, Bangladesh, China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Philippines and Tajikistan.
Mr. Pandala said the experiences would be shared with South Asian member countries so that their inputs could also be used by UNECE’s International PPP Centre for Excellence for formulation of guiding principles. It is a recognition that TCRIP is one of the 12 finalised projects and the lone in the road sector to be showcased to the world. The project logged the maximum points for alleviation of poverty, environmental mitigation, access to services and increasing skill levels of the region to make it to the final list of PPPs. The project, supervised by the Kerala Road Fund Board (KRFB) under the PWD, is one of the five iconic projects by Infrastructure Leasing and Financial Services (IL&FS).
The TCRIP is the first PPP project in the country for Urban Infrastructure (city road) development with the participation of the State and the private sector. The loans were arranged from financial institutions, and equity from IL&FS Transportation Networks Ltd. The presentation of the case studies from eight countries will be followed by a round table on the UNECE draft guiding principles on good governance in people-first PPPs for the UN SDGs.
The TCRIP project was also one of the 12 PPP projects featured at the UNECE forum in Geneva on March 30 this year.
