Article

Role of MSRDC in Transport Development

MAHARASHTRA has always been in the forefront in providing better facilities to the people of the state. It has been fully realised that transport infrastructure is one of the key inputs for accelerating economic and cultural development of any region. Accordingly, Maharashtra has been giving emphasis on providing better transport infrastructure in the state. However, compared to the pace of development and increasing demand for transport, the infrastructure provided by the government has not kept pace with the demand. Therefore, the full potential of the economic development of the state could not be achieved.

Due to competing demand of government resources for various works of the state, the actual budgetary allocation for the development of transport infrastructure in the state has been reducing and thus the gap between demand and supply for the transport infrastructure has been increasing over the years. Aware of this problem, the government at both central level and state level have been giving emphasis on private participation in providing transport infrastructure. In this direction, many policy decisions have been taken, some acts have been amended and rules have been suitably modified.

However, the transition has not been very smooth to encourage private participation in financing and providing infrastructure of longer gestation period as it requires considerable change in the minds of government organisation, bureaucracy, financial institutions as well as private entrepreneurs. After initial efforts, it has been realised that the transition cannot be directly from pure government funding to private funding. There is a need to have an intermediate stage where autonomous public sector organisations can play the role of entrepreneurs in the beginning and demonstrate the implementation of such projects in public/private partnership. With this in mind, Maharashtra government constituted Maharashtra State Road Development Corporation (MSRDC) to accelerate the pace of development of infrastructure by raising resources as entrepreneur and play a role model of entrepreneur who can participate in the development of a large infrastructure particularly in transport infrastructure.

The success story of MSRDC during the last four years of its existence is now well known. It has been possible to implement many prestigious large projects by mobilising additional resources in a tight time-schedule. The construction of 50 flyovers in Mumbai area is now well recognised, and most of the citizens of the city are nowproud of the city’s transport network. There is still considerable scope to improve the transport system in the city and therefore, MSRDC has planned to take up construction of the Bandra-Worli sea link project and its further extension upto Nariman Point. It has also planned to construct Mumbai Trans Harbour Link connecting Mumbai city to the mainland on the East.

For inter-city connection, Mumbai-Pune Expressway had recently been opened in parts. Mumbai-Pune corridor is the highest density traffic corridor in the country and people used to spend long hours exceeding 6 to 7 hours travelling between Mumbai and Pune. The construction of Rs.1,500 crore Mumbai-Pune Expressway will make travel between Mumbai and Pune a pleasure and not an ordeal.

MSRDC has initiated construction of Expressway from Nagpur to Aurangabad and further extension to Mumbai has also been entrusted with planning, design and construction of a major Multimodal International Hub Airport at Nagpur, Light Rail Transit System of the cities of Thane, Nagpur and Pune and many other projects. Three years ago implementation of these high value transport infrastructure projects was a dream and certainly beyond the financial capability of the state government. The formation of MSRDC and its experience in the last three years has made many dreams come true. Having demonstrated successfully financing and implementation of major infrastructure projects in a time-bound programme, MSRDC will be now encouraging participation from private agencies in such infrastructure projects in a big way and it will be able to achieve the objective for which it was set up by the Government of Maharashtra to encourage public private participation in financing and development of infrastructure in Maharashtra.

MSRDC has been en couraging private participation in the execution of these projects. However, by their nature, these transport infrastructure projects cannot be financially viable only on toll/fare box collection and, therefore,it is essential explore innovative financing to raise resources at the minimum cost for financing these projects. Further these projects are also packaged with other resource mobilisation so that implementation of these projects can become financially viable and money can be raised from the market. Hence, these projects become bankable. Because of these efforts on the part of MSRDC, there has been good response from various entrepreneurs for participating in financing and implementation of these mega projects. Each project by its nature requires different method for supplementing the finance which is given in the project outline for each of the above projects. Some of the innovative financing are the value-addition to real estate in the beneficiary zone of the transport project, cess on petrol and diesel, cess on wage bill of corporate bodies in the beneficiary zone, and real estate development along the transport corridor etc. Besides the above methods tried elsewhere, MSRDC has recently taken up the laying of telecom ducts along its various roads and bridges so that the same can be leased to various telecommunication agencies. It is expected that in due course, lease rent from these ducts will be quite substantial. The experience of MSRDC during the last three years has been encouraging and it has again proved that given the right attitude, government support and freedom to formulate its policy with professional management, a lot can be achieved in providing world-class infrastructure in the country. Experience of MSRDC has induced many state governments to adopt pragmatic policy which will be giving good results in days to come.

— By Shri Vikramsinh Patankar,
Minister PWD (PSU)