State governments should accord importance to develop infrastructure projects as it benefited all. The absence of it might not augur well for the State, said S.K. Goel, Chairman, South India Infrastructure Investment (SIII) summit 2011, on Monday.
Talking to reporters, he said though the southern regions had posted growth higher than the national average across several social and economic indicators, they had seen a decline in recent years and infrastructure bottlenecks had surfaced.
To sustain the momentum, these states required heavy investments in infrastructure.
Mentioning that they have invited principal secretary, industries secretary and additional chief secretary of the southern states to make a signature statement during the first edition of the SIII, he said they have to brief their Chief Ministers of the need to invest in infrastructure projects such as roads, power and ports.
“Southern states scored over northern states in creating infrastructure facilities. Of the 22 road projects recently identified by the National Highways Authority of India, most of them pertained to the southern states. T3 at Indira Gandhi International Airport, New Delhi, was created by a Hyderabad firm. While Hyderabad and Bangalore have international airports, it was time for Chennai and Kochi to take advantage of hi-technology airports,” he said.
Detailing about the infrastructure opportunities in the southern region, he said that power demand was estimated to be around 65 to 85 Giga watts in 2020 with a required investment of $50-70 billion; over 545,000 km of state highways and port linkages needed to be developed with an investment of $40-55 billion and incremental capacity addition of 475 million tons in ports requiring investment of $8.5-11.5 billion.
“The first edition of the summit will be held here on November 11 to showcase the investment potential, discuss challenges and options for the State governments to develop, finance and implement the projects, and enable the policy makers, infrastructure developers and investors to interact with each other,” he said.
The Union Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee is likely to inaugurate the one-day event being organised by the Confederation of Indian Industry.
