Industry body Assocham today suggested setting up a new fund for financing mega infrastructure projects which need an investment of about $90 billion over the next two-three years.
In a note submitted to the Planning Commission and the RBI, Assocham Secretary General D S Rawat has proposed that states and centre together should pool their resources to set up 'Infrastructure Financing Fund' exclusively to cater the requirement of infrastructure financing.
Infrastructure financing through public undertakings is estimated to be around $35 billion which would be around three per cent of India's GDP by 2011-12, the note said.
"In totality, the financing for mega projects could work out to be $90 billion, 7.5 per cent of India's GDP in next three years," it said.
The best option available would be that centre and states come together to create a corpus based on consensus so that the infrastructure projects in state, centre and joint sector do not suffer on account of funds, it added.
The chamber also said that credit extension from banks for infrastructure projects should be doubled from the estimated 10 per cent.
Public-private-partnership should be strengthened in a manner between state-owned financial institutions and those in private sector so that the latter can pump in the projected $30 billion investment towards infrastructure projects, it added.
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