Petroleum and natural gas companies without any experience in executing infrastructure projects will no longer be able to bid for projects under the public private partnership (PPP) model.
In its new pre-bidding guidelines for PPP projects, the Finance Ministry has removed petroleum and natural gas from the definition of core sector, which could be awarded PPP projects.
Now, the core sector would include metro rail and logistics park instead of petroleum and natural gas.
This means that petroleum and natural gas companies which do not have experience in core sector-- telecom, power, ports, airports, railways, industrial parks, metro rail, logistics park, irrigation, water supply, sewerage and real estate development-- would not be able to compete for PPP projects.
"Definition of PPP and core sectors has been modified... to exclude petroleum and natural gas and include logistics park and metro rail," the guidelines on Request for Qualification (RFQ), that amended norms issued in 2007, said.
Sources said petroleum and natural gas companies were also bidding for infrastructure projects without any experience in executing such projects.
So, guidelines have been amended to allow only those companies having experience in infrastructure projects to compete for PPP projects, the sources said.