The Bengal Chamber organised the BCC&I Infrastructure Summit 2016 on 29th September at the Hyatt Regency, Kolkata. This was the inaugural edition of our annual Summit, and the principal objective was to create a platform for all infrastructure stakeholders to discuss, analyze, share best practices and bring forward the opportunities in infrastructure and related logistics sectors, especially the cutting-edge developments of today.

Our objective is to create the largest and most relevant forum in the East so that this Summit creates the effective platform for infrastructure-related business development discussions and brings the Government together with private Infrastructure players, corporates and consultants.

India’s power market is the fifth largest in the world. Growth of the power sector is of paramount importance, not only because of its investor friendly outlook but also because if India has to sustain the momentum of development, it should maximize its power generation capacity while ensuring that the impetus of industrial development is not stagnated. However, if the real-time status of project development on the ground were to be taken as a measure, the picture that emerges is in sharp contrast to the narrative of an impending industrial uptick. Over 57 base-load thermal units across India’s northern and western heartland on a single day were faced with ‘reserve shut-down’, a technical term for a unit shut down due to lack of demand. Reflecting the low actual off-take, data from the central electricity regulator or CERC on traded power price shows a consistent drop in volumes since 2009 — a direct consequence of the fact that capacity addition grew at 13.7 annually in the three years to 2015 even as consumption grew at a measly 6 per cent. Despite efforts taken by the Government, investment momentum is yet to pick up and as a result, order inflows are devoid of large investments. There is still capacity underutilisation and, therefore, no investments are coming in capacity addition. Players are waiting for demand momentum to go up. In this scenario it is interesting to understand what would be the view of the prime stakeholders and how cost efficiency and technology would be key instruments to tackle this problem.

As many States are already stressed with their Fund, the cash flow becomes the crucial problem for building infrastucture. Acquiring land is a problem, implementation such as removal of people is again a problem but indeed a great amount of job had already been done. There is a serious demand of private sector investment and that is seriously lacking as the level of private investment is far below the growing need. Maritime Transport is a critical infrastructure for the social and economic development of a country. About 90% by volume and 70% by value of the country’s international trade is carried on through maritime transport. While Indian Railways’ earnings are expected to grow from 1.4 Lakh crore in FY14 to 2.7 Lakh crore by 2020, there is a need for modernization of warehouses, increase of coal transport capacity, regularizing rail land records, raising funds through IPO of profit making e-commerce company IRCTC, among others. It is important to analyze challenges and prospects of connectivity particularly in the East and North Eastern part of the country as that is of great strategic and economic importance for our country in the context of our outreach to the entire South East Asia.

Until recently, India’s infrastructure was widely regarded as inadequate and inefficient. The power sector suffered from a peaking deficit of 14 percent and an energy shortage of 11 percent. Unlike the developed world, where long-term debt can be mobilised from the capital markets, the bond market in India did not present such an option as it was characterised by lack of liquidity and depth. To kick-start the process of private participation in infrastructure, the Government decided to create a new financing vehicle that would overcome the extant constraints. This new vehicle was meant to address the various regulatory and other restrictions; raise long-tenure funds from the market at economic costs and on the scale required; and on-lend to PPP projects while keeping the intermediation costs at the bare minimum. In this context, the Summit was to discuss the various strategies and means adopted by the infra financing companies in order to overcome the present-day challenges.

It was an honour to have the presence of Shri Suresh Prabhakar Prabhu, Hon’ble Minister, Ministry of Railways via video conferencing as the Chief Guest of the Summit. The other guests at the Inaugural Session were Shri Rohit K Singh, Joint Secretary, Ministry of Road Transport & Highways, Government of India; Mr. Vinayak Chatterjee, Chairman & MD, Feedback Infra Pvt. Ltd.; Dr. Arup Roy Choudhury, Former CMD, NTPC Ltd and Chief Commissioner, Right to Public Service Commission in West Bengal; Mr. Dhruv Bhalla, Vice President and Head - International Business, Srei Infrastructure Finance Limited; Dr. Samarjit Chatterjee , Former President, Consulting Engineers Association of India and Dr. Rupali Basu, President and Chief Executive Officer, ER, Apollo Hospitals Group.

The Summit also witnessed the deliberations of eminent speakers like Mr. Santanu Basu, IAS, Chairman & MD, WBPDCL; Mr. Shrirang Karandikar, CEO, India Power Corporation Limited; Mr. Debasis Gupta, General Manager, Special Projects, CESC Ltd.; Mr. V L Patankar, Director, Indian Academy of Highway Engineers; Mr. Dip Kishore Sen, Whole Time Director and Senior Executive Vice President (Infrastructure), Larsen and Toubro and Mr. Deepak Chatterjee, CEO, IPL, IIFCL.