Shailesh Pathak, CEO, L&T Infrastructure Development Projects recommends that even as India moves towards becoming the world's third largest economy by the next decade, the infrastructure sector needs to focus on the timely execution of projects.

Delays in project execution have led both the promoters as well as banks to lose money on account of cost and time overruns.

Total order backlog of the engineering and construction firms was Rs.8.1 trillion at the end of FY18. Of the whole order backlog, almost 62 per cent was contributed by the construction companies, followed by 24 per cent of capital goods companies catering to the energy industry.

Most of the projects we have awarded are sewage treatment plants in various states. These plants use standard available technology.

As I write this, our Prime Minister is already in the UAE, making his second trip in less than three years, to accelerate the infrastructure thrust that the two countries have agreed upon.

With over Rs11 lakh crore debt, project investments worth Rs.32.7 lakh crore and cost overrun of Rs14.35 lakh crore is at stake, the current Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code 2016 is a sigh of relief for India's financial institutions.

I think in many sectors the policies are conducive. The most recent example is the Rewa Ultra Mega Solar Project, where IFC was the lead public-private-partnership (PPP) transaction advisor. We helped structure the bidding process to include a three-tiered payment security mechanism.

India is urbanising at, what a Union Minister has termed, a very 'dramatic' clip. It today has 50 cities with a population of over one million. As per the 2011 Census, the total number of cities and towns in the country had increased to 7,936 from 5,161 in 2001.

The National Mission for Clean Ganga (NMCG) will introduce trash skimmers for surface cleaning of the river in six more cities in the first week of this month. The cities are Rishikesh, Haridwar, Garh Mukhteshwar, Sahibganj, Kolkata and Navdweep. Urban Local Bodies will be the nodal agency to monitor this work.