Need community driven growth

PPC can bring in substantial capital and world class technology into India at a competitive rate, says Puneet Thakur, Director-Projects, AFII Corporate Advisors, in an email interaction with Infrastructure Today.  
 
What are the major achievements of AFII in infrastructure sector advisory?
AFII has been working actively in the field of Infrastructure for more than a decade now. The key areas of its advisory services have included advising its clients on formation of bid consortiums, strategic JVs and advising on structured finance transactions. In addition to this, AFII has also led the development of Public Public Cooperation (PPC) in the infrastructure sector including Railways, Power and Water Sectors. AFII represents some foreign government companies which have proven experience and expertise in infrastructure development. AFII is working to build a government-to-government platform to use the expertise of these foreign government companies in India for development of world class infrastructure in India. It may seem strange but there is nearly no policy framework in existence in India that would foster such engagements even where substantial benefit in terms of investment and technology would accrue to India.  
 
Are the policies in line with India's infrastructure development? Which are the areas need to be taken care of?
As I tried to explain in the previous question, Public Public Cooperation can bring in substantial capital and world class technology into India at costs that are far more competitive than private business houses. However, in all cases, there has to be a dependence on international treaties and agreements signed between heads of state which often consumes more time than the project development process itself. This dissuades the foreign government companies from coming directly into India. India needs definite policy supporting such cooperation on a larger scale.

Besides, there is lack of implementation of deve­lopment programmes on the ground which defeats the purpose of developing a good policy framework. We welcome the new provisions that shall allow pass through of fuel cost in power tariff fixation. More support is required from the government to assure the investors that the fate of billions of dollars that go into setting up of such capex intensive projects, shall not hang for lack of rational policy.
According to us, the frameworks ought to be more forward looking and investor friendly. The GAAR provisions may, to a large extent, again discourage hedge funds and private equity investors from taking positions in the infra space.  
 
What are the external and internal issues affecting India infrastructure story? What should be the basic pillars of sustainable infrastructure model for India?
The key internal issues affecting India's infrastructure story are slow policy decisions, lack of availability of funds, high cost of funds and lack of expertise and implementation experience of Indian contractors. Besides, more community driven development is the need of the hour for addressing the real infra issues in the semi urban and rural areas of the country.
 
Please elaborate on your area of operations and how far AFII is competitive among its peers.
AFII is active in advisory for bid-consortium, strategic JVs and corporate finance. In addition to this, AFII also represents some foreign government companies which have proven experience and expertise in infrastructure development. AFII operates in a niche segment of Public Public Cooperation and is one of the lead investors for the foreign government companies during the project development phase which period may range from few months to a few years depending on the complexity and size of the project. AFII is presently pursuing projects worth over $10 billion in the fields of power, water and railways sector and hopes to deliver these and more in the next 4-5 years.  
 
Please share your outlook for infra sector.
AFII sees the infrastructure sector to pick up in 2013 and grow at a higher rate than last couple of years. Mass rapid transit, highways, water, waste management and power are expected to grow at a faster pace in the coming years. River water management and inland waterways are the projects for the next generation.  
 
What are AFII's future plans? Do you have plans to venture in other sectors?
AFII is actively pursuing projects in power, water and railways. We are also looking to push aggressively our corporate finance services to infrastructure companies. We have plans to venture into oil and gas sector in the near future.