Road transport and shipping minister Nitin Gadkari on Monday said that Jawaharlal Nehru Port in Mumbai will get the first bus that can run on water surface, a move that will push more tourism activities in ports.Only few days back he had talked of floating hotels, a ferris wheel and marinas and jetties to promote intra-city water transport in Mumbai.Sources said that there are a few international spots where such buses ply on water only for a short distance and is a major tourist attraction. “The feasibility of this project will be studied. Usually, such services are offered by private players. We can facilitate for such a project,“ said a shipping ministry official. He admitted that the matter recently came up for discussion.
JNPT officials were not available for comment. TNN

 Source-http://epaperbeta.timesofindia.com/

Nearly six weeks after the Delhi Development Authority (DDA) informed the Delhi High Court that the sites for relocating the Millennium bus depot had been finalised, the Delhi Transport Corporation (DTC) on Monday told the court that it had not been handed over physical possession of the land.

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It will also be responsible for collecting toll at Kherki Daula plaza, which marks the end of the stretch.

 

The RBI on Tuesday issued a number of guidelines and incentives in the form of flexibility in loan structuring, and allowing banks to raise funds for lending to infrastructure sector without regulatory requirements, such as CRR, SLR and priority sector lending targets.

This will incentivise banks to lend to the infrastructure sector. In the past, banks have been reluctant to fund very long-term infrastructure projects, given the inability to raise funds for such long tenures.

The new guidelines will not only help banks reduce their asset-liability mismatches, but also minimise the need for restructuring such loans. Infrastructure is among the top five sectors that contribute significantly to the level of stressed advances.

On the asset side

The RBI has now allowed banks to lend to very long-term projects, with an option to refinance it periodically. This would help in two ways. One, banks would be able to lend to such projects easily without worrying about asset-liability mismatches.

Two, ensure long-term viability of projects by drawing up a more realistic loan repayment schedule. Banks can now have a repayment schedule for 25 years, and opt for refinancing it after a particular period, say five years. This is will ease the cash flow pressure on developers, as the loan repayment is spread over a longer period. Banks are now allowed to draw up a schedule for 80 per cent of the initial concession period (during which the developer is allowed to collect revenues on the project).

For instance, on a 25-year period road project, if the developer is allowed to collect toll revenues for 25 years, then the bank has a repayment schedule for 22 years. “Earlier, banks were constrained to draw up an amortisation schedule for a period of 12-15 years. This resulted in higher stress on cash flows of developers.

Now they can have a more realistic schedule, creating enough cushion for contingencies,” says KR Kamath, Chairman and Managing Director, Punjab National Bank.

This also reduces the need for restructuring, as banks will be allowed to refinance at specified periods.

“Thus, there will be a new set of lenders at different stages of the projects based on the risk appetite. If a financier wants to take on lesser risk and enter when the project is completed, he may not mind settling for a lower return on funding of such projects,” says Kamath.

Banks will be able to raise funds specifically for lending to the infrastructure and affordable housing sectors without regulatory requirements such as CRR, SLR and priority sector lending. Banks can issue long-term bonds of a minimum of seven-year tenure.

At present, banks need to hold 22.5 per cent of their deposits in G-Secs as SLR. Similarly, banks need to set aside 4 per cent of their deposits with the RBI as CRR, which does not fetch any interest.

By freeing up funds for lending to infrastructure, banks will be able to generate higher returns. The cost savings will depend on the amount of incremental bonds issued. Going by current numbers, nearly ₹1 lakh crore of liquidity could get freed up in the banking system. However, the RBI has capped the amount that can be claimed for such regulatory leeway. In the current year, only 16 per cent of the existing infrastructure loans and affordable housing loans on banks’ books will be eligible for claiming such exemptions.

This will gradually increase, and the entire bonds raised will become eligible for regulatory incentives in 2020.

“The more such incremental bonds are issued, the more will be the benefit that will accrue to banks. But the risk appetite for such bonds will also play an important role. As projects kick-start in the infrastructure space and there is more acceptance of such bonds by the markets, the benefit will be more. The cost of such funding will gradually come down,” says Soumya Kanti Ghosh, Chief Economic Adviser, SBI.

For the current year, the cost savings could work out to 10-15 basis points, which can go up to 40-60 basis points in 2020.

On the southern bank at Bogibeel, near Dibrugarh, a 125-metre long steel frame – weighing nearly half of a coal laden cargo train – is slowly, inch-by-inch, pulled out of a huge fabrication shed. It is now resting on the first pillar deck on the water.

With time, it will be pulled further north to make way for a total of 41 such modules to be placed on the pillars. When welded together, these frames will form the bridge, with two railway tracks on the lower deck and a three-lane highway overhead.

Revised deadline

The project has been under construction for the last 17 years and is of huge strategic importance to the Indian Army.

“We are now confident to complete the project by end-2016,” says a senior official of the executing authority, North East Frontier Railway. That is nearly two years behind the last revised deadline of March 2015. Hindustan Construction Company (HCC), which is creating the super structure, echoes the railways version. However, despite repeated efforts no confirmation was available from Gammon India that is engaged in the building the pillars since 2008.

Available information suggests out of 42 pillars, 12 are far from complete and three are semi-finished. Considering the narrow weather window (November-April) it might be a tall task for the company to complete the residual work in the next two years. Railways, however, claim that 90 per cent of pillar work is complete.

Assam Accord proposal

Bogibeel was one of the major promises made by the India government during the peace accord with the separatist forces in Assam on August 15, 1985. The proposal was cleared by the HD Deve Gowda government in 1997. But it took the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government to start construction in 2002.

The idea was to link NH-52 at Dhameji, on the Arunachal border, on the northern bank of Brahmaputra with NH-52-B in Dibrugarh; convert the metre gauge rail links in the north into broad gauge and connect it with existing rail link at Dibrugarh.

While the bridge was estimated to cost ₹1,767 crore (2002); more investments were committed by Railways and the Assam Government in creating requisite rail and road network on either side. To speed up implementation, the bridge was declared as ‘project of national importance” in 2007. The prolonged delay escalated costs by at least three times. The bridge, if completed in end 2016, will cost nearly ₹5,000 crore.

The writer visited the project site at Bogibeel at the invitation of HCC

Under this mode, government bears the construction cost and developer exits the project after building the stretches. So, the developers have no risk in executing such projects unlike the PPP ones.

Announcing this on Monday, road transport minister Nitin Gadkari said that his ministry is trying to arrange finances to take up projects on government funding or EPC mode. “Taking up more projects on public-private-partnership (PPP) is not feasible.

We have to go ahead with EPC projects for at least next two years,” he added while blaming the issues “created by the previous government”.

At present, while 160 highway projects are under imple

mentation on PPP mode entailing an investment of Rs 1.6 lakh crore, there is no progress in case of 65 projects.Out of these 65 projects, 28 have been terminated and fate of another big project is likely to be decided very soon.

The CEO of a major highway construction company told TOI, “As such we have not take any project on PPP mode in the past three years. At present, none is interested considering the risk and prevailing market condition. We are struggling to complete the already bagged projects.” Sensing that government has to create a huge corpus to pay for projects on cash contracts spanning over 2-3 years, Gadkari said that his ministry is going to set up a corporation that will deal with financing of such projects.

Gadkari on Monday said that he has already written to the Prime Minister and finance minister for getting portions of huge amount PF lying with the labour ministry as loan to the corporation.

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