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Our Bureau

Chennai, Nov. 6 Private sector investment in infrastructure in India is low when compared with some of the neighbouring countries, according to Mr Sudhir S. Rangnekar, Managing Director, and Group CEO, Sical Logistics Ltd.

In the last few years, India spent around 3.5 per cent of its Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in infrastructure when compared with 9 per cent by China. Since 1990, 0.7 per cent of India’s GDP was private sector investment in infrastructure compared with 2.6 per cent in Malaysia.

However, infrastructure has got a boost, with the Government planning to invest $492 billion in the Eleventh Five-Year Plan, he said.

There is huge infrastructure in terms of numbers — 12 major ports; one corporate port; 128 airports; 63,000 km of rail length and 3.6 million km of road. “While the quantity of infrastructure is big, the quality is relatively poor till date,” he said. For instance, only 2 per cent is National Highways, which carry 40 per cent of cargo. About 80 per cent of the roads are still in villages, he said at the two-day Auto SCM India 2008 conference.

Mr Rangnekar said that four years ago, IBM did a survey to find out the top four concerns for CEOs of global corporates. Growth was the main concern for the executives followed by harnessing, creativity and innovative manpower, technology and cost control.

If the same study were done today, he said the first priority for executives would be to “introspect and re-strategise”, followed by harnessing creativity and innovative manpower, relevant technology for the business and cost control.

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