US engg firm AECOM bets big on India, eyes 30% growth clip

Buoyed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi's vision of infrastructure development, US-based engineering firm AECOM today said it is expecting a top line growth of 30 percent from Indian operations in the coming fiscal.

Complimenting the Modi administration, AECOM Chairman Michael S Burke said, there has been a "remarkable" improvement in business environment.

"Political stability is noticeable and as a result, India has been the highest recipient of FDI," said Burke, who is part of a business delegation with the visiting US Secretary of State John Kerry.

"We clocked a growth rate of 25 percent (in India) during 2016 and it will accelerate further in 2017 to 30 percent," he said.

The company follows fiscal year beginning October.

It is working on more than half of Modi's visionary projects, he said, adding that the same includes 9 major metro systems, 6,000 km of road projects, 3,500 km of rail line and 10 ports.

"Our vision is closely aligned with PM Modi's vision and we are very well positioned to execute the projects," he said.

It has bagged Smart City projects of Ludhiana and Vizag and is participating in other projects as well.

"We not only want to develop smart city, but also safe city," he asserted.

The company is in the process of ramping up of its headcount.

On US-India CEO Forum objective, his take was the bilateral trade between the two nations should increase from USD 100 billion to USD 500 billion a year and the forum is working in that direction.

Asked about challenges on infrastructure development, Burke said, "It has to be on the financing side... The challenge is... money. There is never going to be enough public money to satisfy all transportation and infrastructure challenges." Some of the public-private partnerships (PPP) did well, some did not, he noted.

"We need to learn from the process. PPP in other countries are fully supported by municipal bonds. Changing financial structure will accelerate pace of PPP so that we can bring in more private sector money from both inside and outside the country," he added.