Plan panel to review sectors quarterly

The Planning Commission, on Monday, set out quarterly targets for core infrastructure ministries, making it easier to track implementation across the road, port, highway, power and airport sectors.

This regular monitoring could impact budgetary allocations made to these ministries next year.

“We have started this quarterly assessment exercise to check the loopholes midway. Until now, the ministries were used to saying everything is fine, and at the end of the year, when the final figures come out, they were way behind targets. This will not happen now,” said Montek Singh Ahluwalia, deputy chairman, Planning Commission.

In the power sector, for example, only 34% of the 14,507 mw capacity addition target was achieved last year. This time, the full-year target has been enhanced by a whopping 40% to 20,359 mw and this has been then broken up into quarterly targets of 4,126.5 mw, 4,831.5 mw, 4,709 mw and 6,691.5 mw for 2010-11.

Ahluwalia said that owing to fund constraints, the government wants to rationalise allocation based on the performance of respective ministries. “We all know that the resources are limited. So the money allocation will be based on economic rationality in future.”

For roads and highways, only about 37% of the 3,165.55 km target to build highways was achieved last year at 2,008.93 km. No wonder then that the Commission has pruned this fiscal’s target to 2,500 km. The quarter wise breakup is: 764.91 km, 947.39 km, 1,434.02 km and 2,500 km.

In keeping with the expectations on highway building, the Commission has also raised expenditure on highways by more than three-fold, against the actual investment of Rs 11,608.5 crore last fiscal, the target for this year is Rs 35,680.86 crore.
The Railways will add 18,000 wagons, 4,000 coaches and 1,019 km of new lines during 2010-11.

On the airport front, total investment envisaged by the Airports Authority of India (AAI) is Rs 2,635.61 crore this fiscal, almost half of the Rs 5,320.71 crore spent in 2009-10. CSI Airport at Mumbai accounts for the largest chunk of investment at Rs 2,280 crore, whereas Delhi will see a mere Rs 162 crore investment by AAI this fiscal.