The Uttar Pradesh government’s public-private partnership (PPP) measures, to overcome a resource crunch and usher in rapid development, is turning out to be a mixed bag with success and failure in equal measures.
The Mayawati government has taken the PPP route in several sectors including power, education, infrastructure, sugarcane, tourism, transport and urban development. However, the perceived rigidity in policies and failure to catch the imagination of investors is hampering several projects.
Work is underway for the Rs 30,000-crore flagship Ganga Expressway Project (GEP),a 1,047 km long, eight-lane expressway on the bank of the Ganga, to be constructed by the Jaypee Group. “The land acquisition process is on,” Industrial Development Commissioner VK Sharma told Business Standard.
Meanwhile, the state urban development department is working on the Integrated Urban Rejuvenation Plans (IURP) for eight cities — Lucknow, Kanpur, Varanasi, Agra, Allahabad, Meerut, Ghaziabad and Aligarh.
IURP will include multi-modal transport system, parking facilities, infrastructure development, sanitation, public convenience and waste management.
However, in the power sector, the two proposed thermal power plants at Bara and Karchhna in Allahabad district are still to see the light of the day.
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For Karchhna, Jaypee Power Ventures has emerged the lowest tariff-based bidder to set up the power plant even though its bid is higher than the two earlier lower bids of Lanco Kondapalli and Reliance Power that were cancelled by the government.
The state government has recently invited more bids for the Bara plant and the last date for the companies to submit their Request for Qualification (RFQ) has been extended, official sources said.
The Roza power plant in Shahjahanpur district, being set up by Reliance, is likely to go full steam by the end of next fiscal.
However, the state government’s target to privatise 33 UP State Sugar Corporation mills has come a cropper, since the bidding companies were not ready to pay the reserve price for these units.
The bid to privatise 25 of the 28 cooperative sugar mills has also been a non-starter and not found takers so far.
Seeking to boost investment in infrastructure projects, the state government held an investors’ meet in Lucknow on November 21 which was attended by industry captains, besides representatives from reputed consultancies.
The state government is keen on the PPP model for the technical education and has handed over 25 polytechnics and 125 ITIs to a private partner after a bidding process.
However, not much headway has been made owing to the opposition from the UP State ITI & Polytechnic Joint Action Committee.
The state plans to liberalise the transport sector and has thrown open lucrative routes for private operators. In spite of that it has received lukewarm response from the private parties. The earlier bidding process has been cancelled and is likely to be taken up again.
Meanwhile, the 50-odd properties of the state tourism department have not found suitors for privatisation. The selection process for a consultant for setting up an international airport at Kushinagar and development of the Buddhist Circuit through PPP on a Design Built Finance Operate Transfer (DBFOT) basis is still incomplete although over four months have passed.