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.

>raja.simhan@thehindu.co.in

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