100-day delivery: Modi ready with infra report card

Swarup said they have 450 projects worth Rs 22 lakh crore on portal out of which 165 projects worth Rs 5.7 lakh crore have already been cleared. Around 230 are yet to be cleared.

Vinayak Chatterjee, Chairman of Feedback Infra, said a tremendous amount of backroom work and hectic activity is seen across ministries to kick start the infra cycle. He said the output of government’s initiatives can be felt on ground by Q4.

Below is the transcript of Anil Swarup and Vinayak Chatterjee's interview with Latha Venkatesh and Sonia Shenoy on CNBC-TV18.Latha: You assessment first of the first 100 days of the Modi government, how many more projects could you disentangle and put on the road?Swarup: There are large number of projects that have got moving. Number of clearances have been given. But what is most important is that the emphasis is now on improving the processes. So we are looking at it in two manners. One is that we are trying to digitize all the processes and our objective is that by March 31, 2015, no industry has to go to any office to file for application for clearances. If we have our way and the way we are moving, we are hopeful that by that time, we should be in a position to create a portal wherein the industry could go to that portal and file all the clearances and is able to track those. That is one.The second is that we are looking at reengineering certain processes. We are looking very closely at the existing processes and see if there are areas where we could reengineer those processes and improve some of the areas and we have had some discussions on that. So these are the two primary ways in which we are trying to improve the ease of business. 

Latha: Can you give us a little more details about this portal? I missed the date when you will be inaugurating it and exactly what are the clearances that will come through that portal?

Swarup: The initiative has already been taken by Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP) that has set up an eBiz portal. What we are trying to do is to identify all the clearances in various departments like the ministry of environment, forest, ministry of coal, ministry of mines so on and so forth as also the clearances that are required at the state level.So far we have been able to identify 60 such clearances out of which 25 are related to the central government and 35 to the state government. Initiative has already been taken, you might be aware that today you can file the forest related clearance application on the web. The environment application will go live on the September1.Similarly, we are working with other ministry like the directorate of foreign trade (DGFT), by the Employees Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO), the Employee State Insurance Corporation (ESIC). The attempt is to see whether all these linkages could be provided on the eBiz portal where the industry could go and then file their clearance applications or registration applications. That is what we are attempting to do and the attempt is that by March 31, 2015 we should be able to get most of these clearances moving through that eBiz portal that has been set up by DIPP.

Sonia: What is your assessment of the first 100 days of the Modi government and what is happening on the ground in terms of any additional clearances, roadblocks that have been cleared versus what used to happen before?Chatterjee: Many of us were afraid that when the new government came into power, it would dismantle the set up that Anil Swarup heads, which is the Cabinet Committee of Investment (CCI) Supported by the project monitoring group (PMG). We were a little afraid that a lot of good work, a lot of data collection, a lot of energy and enthusiasm that had gone into the last year and a half of United Progressive Alliance (UPA) when this institution was set up would be dismantled.So one of the biggest positives and I would like to compliment Mr Swarup on his being the leader of the team that has been very well recognise even by a new government that has come in which was in opposition to the earlier government that it has bestowed its trust and confidence on this group and said, please carry on with the good work. I think that has been very heartening for us.Secondly, for what Anil Swarup said, I am personally extremely happy with the fact that things are going on through a transparent e-platforms. He already mentioned a few cases where it has already happened and more is to happen. I am also very happy with the fact that PMG has pushed the states to create parallel, digital platforms that will be synchronous with the clearances monitoring and pushing that is happening at the central level. These are all very good stuff that is happening and the results are there to see and more will come.To directly answer your question on the first 100 days -- in a sense it is the first three months. If you knock out the first one month for settling down, appointing ministers etc, what I have seen in the last two months is very huge level of frenetic activity at the various infrastructure ministries, which I have some degree of relationship in terms of getting to know what is happening -- whether it is the road ministry that is actively preparing a huge bunch of packages for engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) and solving the problem of existing build-operate-transfer (BOT), whether it is a power and coal ministry trying to rationalise coal linkages and attempt gas pricing, there is a tremendous amount of backroom work that is happening in the ministries and we in the private sector collectively believe that it is in Q4 that we are going to see traction on the ground in terms of projects coming to life, in terms of corporate sector order books and orders for capital equipment, the curve should start picking up from Q4 onwards.

Latha: Can you take us through the reengineering of processes that you spoke about - what does that mean in tangible terms?Swarup: In environment and forest clearances, there are processes that take a lot of time and they go at various levels. So what the government is now considering is whether they can reduce the levels, whether there could be some delegation of powers in terms of delegating it to other authorities at the local levels. These are in the realm of discussions right now, no discussions has been taken as yet. But there is generally a thinking that the processes will have to be looked into and seen if some changes could be brought about in fast tracking the clearances. This is not to by-pass any process. The primary objective is to see whether the processes could be expedited.

_PAGEBREAK_Latha: How did you understand the SC order yesterday? Will all mining have to stop and wait for September 1 when the court might pronounce on what it means -- if it is illegal, you stop mining, is that how it is understood?Swarup: September 1 is not very far away. Let us not jump into any conclusion. The SC if I remember correctly has itself said that they will look into this issue, they have not cancelled any license per se. I think we should wait for September 1.Latha: I am just asking if illegal means should not mine.Swarup: That is for a lawyer to decide. I am not a lawyer fortunately. Let them take a call on that. I would rather wait for September 1 and see how it moves rather than prematurely come to a judgement and start worrying about it.Sonia: Just one quick word on the eBiz platform that you spoke about, what are the states in which this digitization process work has started and where it would be easy to integrate it with the central platform?Swarup: A number of states had taken their own initiatives to digitize various processes. States like Gujarat, Karnataka, Punjab, Andhra Pradesh -- we are examining what is happening in these states. Our objective is to create a national platform for even state clearances. That will allow interstate interoperability. There are large number of projects that are getting implemented in multiple states. So in that sense if we have a national platform, allowing variants to the states as a module to be attached to be added on, that would be a better way of doing it rather than going to each state and working a module for each state separately.States are on board, our experience in the project monitoring group helps us understand that because after we set up this national platform, there are 14 states that have already set up this state project monitoring group and that is on the basis of the sort that we have prepared. So there is a lot of understanding and I think the discussions that we have had in the states has held us in good state.

Latha: The PM met all the infrastructure ministries and set them some very stiff targets, can you take us through what the targets are and whether they can be achieved by March 31?

Swarup: I must confess that I was not a part of that discussion that has happened with the secretaries of various infrastructure ministries.

I think more than the targets that you speak of, it is the process that is set in motion as Mr Chatterjee was rightly pointing out, there have been tasks assigned to these ministries and there is a lot of ground work that is being done. I don’t think 100 days is a time when you can assess activities on the ground in terms of infrastructure. However, the fact of the matter is as I mentioned in my case, a lot of ground work has already been done in terms of improving the ease of business and that appears to be the primary objective. The belief is that if the business becomes easy then investment will follow and that is what we are focusing on in PMG.

Sonia: If you could help us with some ballpark numbers on what the backlog is currently in terms of projects, how much of the backlog is likely to get cleared by the end of the fiscal both in terms of number of projects and the total amount?

Swarup: As things stand, we have around 450 projects on our portal entailing an investment of around Rs 22 lakh crore, out of which 165 projects worth Rs 5.7 lakh crore have been cleared.

Of this entire number of 450 projects, the PMG came to a conclusion that we cannot do much about 45 projects because either they are in a court of law or in a manner that PMG cannot facilitate a decision. There are about 20 such projects where policy decisions are involved. So we are left with about 230 projects. Now it maybe difficult for me to clearly give you a target as to how many of these will get cleared for the simple reason that each project has multiple issues and each issue has multiple layers of clearance.

I will give you an example, we are working on three prominent railway projects that will ease the supply of coal, which is the flavour of the day -- everyone seems to be talking about it. These are three railway projects in the states of Odisha, Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh, very crucial projects that were stuck for past six years on amount of forest, environment and land clearance. So of these three projects, forest clearance has been given, in two of them stage II has been given, in one stage I has been given. In one such project, activity has started on the ground, construction work has started on the ground and we believe that these projects will get through by December 2016.

Now at this point in time, we are only working on various processes and clearances so as to ensure that the project gets going or it starts delivering by December 2016. I am told that once these projects come through, coal to the tune of around 200 million tonne over five years, they will be able to mine. That is a substantial amount considering that our total mining today is about 500 million tonne. So I just give you an example to illustrate that it maybe difficult for me to give an exact number as to how many projects will be cleared in next one year or so.