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Emulate China: Chidambaram

Special Correspondent

"In timely execution of projects"

NEW DELHI: Even as India is compared to China, there is still a lot to learn from the neighbour in timely execution of projects, Finance Minister P. Chidambaram said on Monday.

In his keynote address at a conference on `India's infrastructure needs with public-private partnership: The international experience and perspective' here, Mr Chidambaram said: "India has often been compared with China... I invite comparison with China. There is enough room in the world for both China and India to grow... China and India, in many ways, complement each other but, in many areas, we compete with each other."

Yet, there was still a lot to learn from China. "... We believe that we can learn from China about execution of projects within time, strict discipline and reward-punishment system for those who are in charge of project execution... We do not envy China, we wish to emulate China in the matter of infrastructure."

India's savings and investment rates, as percentages of the country's gross domestic product, had gone up by two per cent. To sustain the nine per cent revised growth rate during 2007-12, "both savings and investment as a proportion of GDP must be raised further."

For sustaining the high growth rate during the 11th Plan period, the infrastructure sector alone would require an investment of about $ 320 billion over the next five years. He was hopeful that funding would come from the private sector on the public-private partnership model.

However, there were several constraints to luring investments in the sector. The major one being the weakness in policy and regulatory framework.

This apart, there was a dearth of long-term financial market instruments to meet the equity and debt financing requirements of infrastructure projects.

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