Planning Commission Deputy Chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia today said the decision to auction 3G spectrum as per schedule in January next year augurs well for investment to sector which expected to get a fillip soon.
"The 3G auction decision taken yesterday is a major one," Ahluwalia said here today in an address via video-conferencing at the CII-Suresh Neotia Centre of Excellence.
Telecom Minister A Raja yesterday said that the Empowered Group of Ministers (EGoM) had decided to auction 3G mobile spectrum as per schedule from January 14 next year and allotment would be made to four private players simultaneously by August.
"It (the decision) will open the door to a lot of investments in 12 to 18 months," he added.
A spurt in investment to telecom sector is likely to prompt fund flows to infrastructure-related areas like ports and roads.
He said already the Ministry of Roads and Transport has set an ambitious target to bid for 8,000 kms of road projects in the current fiscal compared to an average of less than 2,000 kms in the previous three years.
Ahluwalia said the Planning Commission lent full support to the demand of the roads and highways ministry to bring some changes in model concession for road projects and agreed to the changes sought.
"This was done after an internal review of the situation after the road programme got interrupted after the Lehman Brothers crisis and we hardly had any bids for the road project that was bid out in the last quarter," he said.
Ahluwalia said he was not satisfied with the progress in the infrastructure sector as it could expand faster but was confident that in one year from now India would definitely be able to say activities in infrastructure had gathered momentum.
Underlining the importance of manufacturing, he said the service sector alone cannot provide sustainable growth of 9-10 per cent.
He also said there should be enabling labour laws to encourage private companies to hire in large numbers and added that he was in favour of benchmarking India with China.
