Swarup panel will help 215 large stalled projects restart: Finance Minister

A committee headed by Anil Swarup has been appointed to re-start 215 large projects worth over Rs 7 lakh crore that have been stalled for various reasons, Finance Minister P Chidambaram said on Thursday.

The panel will look at ways to get the projects off the ground at the earliest, he told the 66th annual general meeting of Indian Banks' Association (IBA), the umbrella body of the banking industry.

"I am happy to inform you that the Prime Minister today approved appointment of Anil Swarup from the Cabinet Secretariat as the head of a panel to identify and help restart the 215 large projects that have been stalled for one reason or other for years," Mr Chidambaram said.

"I hope with this panel, which is likely to be constituted in a couple of days, we will be able to get these projects worth Rs 7 trillion identified and get started. Once these projects get started, we will see the results of them on investment in the remaining three quarters of this fiscal," he said.

The Finance Minister is hoping to accelerate economic growth by getting stalled projects off the ground. His brainchild, the Cabinet Committee on Investment (CCI) has already cleared several thosand crores worth of projects in oil and gas, power and road sector.

Each of these projects that would be restarted on recommendation of the Swarup panel, will be tracked and get implemented on a time-bound manner, he said.

Noting that banks have already extended Rs 53,000 crore to these projects, the Finance Minister said, he wants the bankers to closely work this panel, because it is in their interest that these projects get off the ground as this is their own money that is stuck.

The Finance Minister also said the Cabinet will finalise some of the crucial pending decisions in the four key sectors - roads, coal, oil & gas and fertilisers - in the next three to four days, but did not offer details.

Stating that nearly 340 projects worth Rs 10 lakh crore are stuck, he said, his meetings with industrialists and banks in the past few months in Mumbai, Bangalore, Hyderabad and Chennai have made him constitute this panel, because he understands the concerns of the entrepreneurs whose monies are stuck in these projects.

Giving a break-up of the stalled projects, he said while 215 are large projects worth Rs 7 lakh crore, there 126 are medium projects worth Rs 3.5 lakh crore that are stuck.

Mr Chidambaram said these projects are stalled due to a host of reasons such as forest clearance issues and pollution concerns.

However, he said, "I am confident that these are not insurmountable problems. All we need is to work together and revive our animal spirits by getting these projects kick-started and then an efficient system can surely resolve these issues."