India needs half a billion dollars to their shattered infrastructure

New Delhi, Jan 8, 2008. - In order to solve their pharaonic infrastructure deficit, India has made ​​a huge investment needed: 100,000 million dollars annually in the next five years, 9 percent of its GDP.
The Government has not only repeatedly recognized the existence of a bottleneck in the sector, which hampers their growth, but recently decided to convene a meeting of the Infrastructure Committee to get fast to those responsible for future projects.
In his will is the idea of achieving that India grows over 10 percent annually at the end of the eleventh Five Year Plan, between 2007 and 2012.
"The Cabinet has recently approved five-year project, which seeks an increase in infrastructure spending from 5 percent now to 9 percent," he said recently vice president of the Planning Commission, Montek Singh.
Singh, one of the voices that most insistently demands greater attention to the sector, estimated at 500,000 million dollars the "massive" Indian investment needs in the next five years.
Until now, limitations in infrastructure have constrained the goals of India: the bad road conditions have, for example, that 70 percent of freight traffic using only 3 percent of the tracks.
That poor road and communication not only an increase in logistics costs (13 percent of total), but leaves no alternative to hundreds of thousands of peasants, who are doomed to subsistence because if they wanted to sell their products agricultural market, these come rotten.
In the city, major airports Indians live in an almost permanent congestion, as traffic increases year after year and there is unanimous agreement on the need to build new and expand existing terminals.
The failure of airports is extended to the river and maritime transport: on average, takes more than 80 hours to load and unload a ship in major Indian ports, ten times more than in Hong Kong.
And on energy, India lives paid to the constant power cuts, which highlight the shortcomings of supply and the need to invest between 120,000 and 150,000 million in the next five years, according to a study by the Confederation of Industry of India (CII).
In a recent survey, 90 percent of employers in northern India told to use their own generators to cope with the cuts, and 75 out of 100 said their "biggest problem" is the poor infrastructure of the sector.
With this background, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) has recommended to India increased public investment and efficiency and a reduction in subsidies, with the example of the telecommunications sector, liberalized 1997 with "exemplary results."
This sector, with its clear organization and management by a regulatory body, is also the model cited by the reformist prime minister, Manmohan Singh, a supporter of partnerships between public and private sectors to finance the projects.
With the goal dreamed of growing at the pace of 10 percent, India is looking at the example of China, a country whose economy is moving in two digits, yes, spending seven times more on infrastructure.
But not only China is ahead of India in context, more regional, southern Asia, the Asian elephant concentrated 80 percent of investment requirements, data from a World Bank report shows that other countries have done better homework.
Now, ready to tackle the problem, the Indian government wants to throw even their foreign exchange reserves (about 260,000 million) provided to accelerate growth now supported by the growing potential of your market and reforms of the early 1990.
"It's not for lack of resources," says Montek Singh optimistic planner.

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