The Japan International Cooperation Agency will complete the feasibility report for the first phase of the Chennai-Bangalore Industrial Corridor by September.
According to Mr Shin Oya, Chief Representative (India), Japan Bank for International Cooperation, the project is quite important for the Japan-India relationship.
Speaking at a national conference on the project organised by the Assocham along with the Madras Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Mr Oya said that the project could be a good investment for urbanisation. While there are infrastructure bottlenecks, the project could be a ‘change maker’, he said.
According to Mr C. Kandasamy, Director-General (Road Development) and Special Secretary, Ministry of Road Transport & Highways, the CBIC could go up to Mangalore. This is still being debated. The project along with the expressway will go hand-in-hand to develop the ‘Corridor of Rural Development’ between Chennai and Bangalore.
Under the National Highways Development Programme (Phase VI), about 1,000 km of expressways are to be created at a cost of Rs 16,680 crore. This project was approved in November 2006, and is being done on Design, Build, Finance and Operate basis. The target for completion is 2015.
Chennai-Bangalore (334 km) is one of the four expressway projects. The other three are Vadodara-Mumbai (400 km), Delhi-Meerut (66 km) and Kolkata-Dhanbad (277 km), he said.
Mr Kandasamy said that instead of public-private-partnership, there should be addition of people to it to make four ‘Ps’. This will make it an inclusive project, and win-win for all stakeholders, including both State and Union Government, he said.
The CBIC is a multi-billion dollar project, which was conceived last year.
Keywords: Chennai-Bangalore Industrial Corridor, Japan International Cooperation Agency, Japan Bank for International Cooperation, Assocham, Madras Chamber of Commerce and Industry
Comments:
The project is still in early preliminary stage...and perhaps will not see the the light of the day in the next 10 years! Already Chennai has so many flyovers, bridges, railway lines criss-crossing the city...Tamil Nadu has borrowed the highest loan from the world bank..and other places..State has no resouce generation capacity..with acute power shortage ..mismanaged public utility services. OK..We can keep talking?
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