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Kerala has become the third State to set up a web portal on the lines of the Project Monitoring Group (PMG) of the Cabinet Committee on Investments at the Cabinet Secretariat in New Delhi.
The portal will monitor the implementation of projects with an outlay of up to ₹1,000 crore in public and private sectors in the State. PMG in New Delhi deals with projects of ₹1,000 crore and above.
Nodal agencyChief Secretary EK Bharat Bhushan launched the portal at an interactive meeting hosted here on Thursday by Ficci and Kerala State Industrial Development Corporation (KSIDC), nodal agency for the facility.
In his address, Bharat Bhushan described the launch of the portal as milestone. This would be an excellent tool to tracking and evaluating projects for all stakeholders.
“So many unexpected things crop up during project execution, and these are besides approvals and other things. For instance the land acquisition legislation has raised some nasty surprises,” he said.
Anil Swarup, Additional Secretary, Cabinet Secretariat, Delhi, said on the occasion: “What we have experienced during the last 11 months makes us believe that this type of an arrangement could be applied for projects between ₹100 crore and ₹1,000 crore. I must compliment Ficci for having taken the initiative for making this happen,” Swarup added.
Kudos to KeralaKerala also needs to be complimented for launching this portal; because this is the third state after Odisha and Uttarakhand to launch it.
“I’m sure that this will be useful as the one is in Delhi with the central government where we have cleared 150 projects worth ₹5.3 lakh crore,” Swarup added.
In the current scheme of things, State Governments submit details of mega projects to Delhi to resolve inherent issues that impact their implementation and also to track the status of such projects.
In Kerala, KSIDC is the nodal agency to facilitate, review and fast-track the progress of all mega projects in the State.
Managing Director, KSIDC, is the nodal officer for the State for tracking the online project management system.
Constant monitoringThe Central Cabinet Secretariat has now adopted a similar mechanism at the State-level and developed a web portal similar to the one existing in New Delhi.
Aruna Sundararajan, Managing Director, KSIDC, said that projects monitored by the portal would have huge developmental impact.
Because these projects are so large, they require a lot of coordination and constant alignment of stakeholders who all have to work together to make them happen.
Many of them have been running into time delays for want of adequate coordination or adequate dispute redressal mechanism.
But the PMG is institutional mechanism, a powerful one at that. It provides status updates, ensures coordination at all levels and even red-flags issues even before they come up.
“This helps us to proactively align ourselves and come up with proper dispute resolution mechanism,” she added.
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