Golden Quad to be complete this year

UPA's doing 4.48 km per day as against NDA's 1.86 km.

After the recent success in privatising the Delhi and Mumbai airports, the announcement of the railway freight corridor project, and the rapid growth in the telecom sector, anything the Budget announced in the infrastructure sector was expected to be a bonus.

Even so, the government announced a step up of the central Plan outlay in the power, telecom and transport sectors of around Rs 20,000 crore with the total outlay in 2006-07 expected to be around Rs 100,000 crore "" around half of this is for the transport sector and 30 per cent for power.

Responding to the previous government's criticism that the ambitious National Highways programme had ground to a halt, Finance Minister P Chidambaram said his government was working on the Golden Quadrilateral (GQ) project at the rate of 4.48 km a day as compared to 1.86 km a day prior to May 2004, when the UPA was sworn in.

The GQ would be 96 per cent complete by June this year and the North South East West corridors by December 2008.

In addition, the government has decided to develop 1,000 km of access-controlled expressways. These will be on new alignment and built on the design, build, finance and operate model.

The sections identified are Vadodara-Mumbai, Delhi-Chandigarh, Delhi-Jaipur, Delhi-Meerut, Delhi-Agra, Bangalore-Chennai and Kolkata-Dhanbad. The Budget proposes to restructure the National Highway Authority of India into a multi-disciplinary body.

In addition, the government is confident of adding 5,083 Mw of additional capacity in 2005-06, taking the total Tenth Plan addition to 34,000 Mw.

The finance minister did not refer to the policies of electricity pricing and the losses of state electricity boards that continue to hobble the sector.

However, as Feedback Ventures Chairman Vinayak Chatterjee points out, the finance minister has disappointed by not disclosing a key figure that the industry had been clamouring for.

"We have been asking for the figure of gross capital formation in infrastructure as a percentage of gross domestic product. That would have helped us plan things properly," said Chatterjee.

Informal reports suggest that the figure for India is only 4 per cent, compared with 11 per cent for China. "We will have to take this figure to at least 10 per cent for the GDP to grow at 8-10 per cent. For that, we must know it first," said Chatterjee.

The Plan allocation for the department of shipping has been increased by 37 per cent to Rs 735 crore. A detailed study has been proposed to identify a suitable location for a new deep draft port in West Bengal.

"There is a re-affirmation of the public-private partnership as a strategy. That is encouraging. There is also promise for next year," said IL&FS Chief Executive Pradeep Singh.

He pointed out that the access control expressways, since they will be on new alignment, will open up new corridors for development by opening up the hinterland.

They will convert agricultural land and population into industrial ones.