The Committee on Revisiting and Revitalising the PPP Model of Infrastructure Development has submitted its report. The committee has suggested broad guidelines for the next generation of PPP contracts, while allocating and managing risks. As per the report, an entity should bear normal business risk; an assessment is to be carried out regarding the relative ease and efficiency of risk management by the entity concerned; the cost effectiveness of managing risk needs to be evaluated; any overriding considerations/stipulations of a particular entity need to be factored in prior to implementing the risk management structure; the DEA, or preferably the 3P India to mainstream PPPs, should deploy sophisticated modelling techniques to assess risk probabilities and the provisions to be made for them; and there should be ex-ante provisioning for a renegotiation framework in the bid document itself.
The Ministry of Road Transport and Highways (MoRTH) has launched two web-based portals – INFRACON and ePace – to ensure greater transparency in the implementation of road projects. INFRACON provides details about consultants and consultation agencies. It serves as a platform for infrastructure consultants where individual consultants as well as consulting firms could register themselves. ePace provides detailed information on the status of national highway projects. Details including project reports, funding status, and physical progress for around 1,800 projects have been made available on epace.nic.in.