India wants ‘Global Infrastructure Hub’ to kick-off

The Dollar Business Bureau India on Wednesday, called for an early operationalisation of ‘Global Infrastructure Hub’, which has been set up following the last G-20 Summit for the development of a knowledge sharing platform and to improve investment as sought by Prime Minister of India at Brisbane. Representing India, Minister of State for Finance Jayant Sinha attended a G-20 Meeting of Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors, held in Istanbul, Turkey, on February 9 & 10, 2015. In his address during various sessions at the event, the Indian Minister called for investments, especially in the infrastructure sector, as a goal to achieve the G-20 collective growth objective. The Minister further called for a long term financing from institutional investors and new financial models, as key priorities to promote global infrastructure sector as a benefiting sector. The Minister emphasized on the need for improving public investment processes including Public Private Partnership (PPP) to attract better investments which would boost the growth of economy. Expressing concerns over the unconventional global monetary policies, the Indian Minister called for strong IMF policies and an effective mechanism to deal with the negative spillovers that arise at the time of withdrawal of these old policies. As a solution to resolve the Tax-related issues, the Minister stressed on immediate implementation of the Automatic Exchange of Information on a global scale by including financial centres. Sinha further said that information exchange would enable India trace illegal transactions and illegal funds stashing in the foreign banks, earned by tax evasions. “There is a need for promotion of innovation as a process to raise domestic capital that would help the markets for funding start-ups,” said the Minister, adding that India has taken steps to promote domestic venture capital and is ready to share its best practices with the global partners. With a Smart City initiative, India is already into the process of boosting the infrastructure sector by allowing construction projects on a larger scale. To this effect, the Union Urban Development Ministry of India had also called for fast approval of procedures with respect to the construction projects and pitched for completion of clearances within a period of 30 days. In the light of this background, the National Building Code-2015 that would be finalised by September 2015 is also expected to boost the infrastructure sector on a larger scale, by enabling single window clearance for construction projects.  

This article was published on February 11, 2015.