Building on the good experience from public-private partnership (PPP) model for infrastructure development, the Centre intends to come up with a ‘comprehensive policy' to improve resource flows to the infrastructure sector.

Both the Centre and the States can use this ‘comprehensive policy', the Finance Minister, Mr Pranab Mukherjee, said at an event organised by the Institute of International Finance here today.

Mr Mukherjee highlighted that a major share of public resources — about 48.5 per cent of gross budgetary support to the Central Plan —has been allocated for the development of infrastructure. The foreign institutional investors investment limits in corporate bonds have been liberalised and special vehicles in the form of notified infrastructure debt funds with certain tax concessions have been announced to improve the flow of resources to this sector, he added.

FDI policy

“Discussions are underway to also liberalise the FDI policy”, Mr Mukherjee said, adding that the Government's approach has been to attract and leverage private investment in infrastructure to meet the growing requirement of the economy.

Meanwhile, on the economy, Mr Mukherjee said that it was back to its pre-crisis growth momentum. “The recovery has been swift and broad-based. All three sectors — agriculture, industry and services — are contributing to consolidation of growth. Our tax revenues have grown at an exceptional rate. There has been a strong rebound in our exports in recent months. As a result, the current account deficit is likely to be around the level in 2009-10, lower than earlier anticipated,” he added. The current account deficit in 2009-10 was 2.8 per cent of GDP.

krsrivats@thehindu.co.in

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