The financial turbulence in the global markets has left many challenges for the infrastructure sector. With private sector investments drying up, due to the tight monetary condition, the demand for massive government-backed spending on infrastructure has gained momentum. Such spending raises the demand for steel, cement and capital equipment, which in turn, will have a cascading effect on the other segments of the economy. In a bid to give a further push to the infrastructure industry, the Government of India has announced a slew of majors in its stimulus package which includes: additional plan expenditure of up to Rs. 20,000 cr in the current year focusing on the critical rural-infrastructure and social security schemes. The infrastructure companies allowed borrowing up to $500 mn as against $100 mn. This will be helpful for the infrastructure companies that are facing constraints in achieving financial closure for their projects. The External Commercial Borrowing norms have also been eased to allow rupee expenditure for the entire $500 mn under automatic route. The Infrastructure Investment Finance Company Ltd. (IIFCL) is to function as a refinancier for infrastructure loans and is allowed to raise Rs. 30,000 cr tax-free infrastructure bond for refinancing projects in the highway and port sectors. The finance ministry has expanded the definition of infrastructure companies to include exploration, refining and mining.

Against this backdrop, the present issue deals with the topics ranging from performance appraisal of major Indian ports, Public-Private-Partnership (PPP) models, in agricultural marketing infrastructure, methods of financing road projects in India and value added services in the telecom sector.

Ports play a catalytic role in handling almost 95% of the export-import trade in the country. With 12 major ports and 200 minor ports on its coastline of 8,000 kms, India needs large capacity addition to achieve a better GDP growth in future. Most of the Indian ports are working above 90% capacity. The planning commission has planned to create surplus port capacity of around 30% by 2011-12. At the same time, it is vital for the port authorities to increase the performance of the ports along with the increasing volume of cargo. The paper, "Performance Appraisal of Indian Major Ports Using Port Ranking Model", by K M Chudasama analyzes the performance of major Indian ports by ranking them on the basis of operational performance indicators and physical facility indicators. The study reveals that the physical facilities of ports contribute significantly to its overall performance.

Delivery of efficient services to users at affordable prices has increasingly led to private participation in infrastructure sectors all over the world. There is a growing consensus among policy makers that the PPP mode holds the key to the development of infrastructure in the country. The objective of inviting private investment into infrastructure services should primarily be to increase investment and operational efficiencies in the provision of these services although maximizing revenue can be considered as an important secondary objective in some areas. D Satish and Pragya Shah in the paper, "A Study of Public Private Partnership Models", assess the need for private sector participation in infrastructure with various models of PPP.

Marketing infrastructure is required to ensure free flow of the farm produce and its efficient marketing. The paper, "Patterns of Private and Public Sector Investment in Agricultural Marketing Infrastructure in India", by M S Jairath and Gaurav Jairath discusses the importance of private investment for creating efficient marketing infrastructure to add to the public investment in the agricultural marketing infrastructure. The authors have suggested various measures not only for huge investment in this sector but for ensuring their timely execution. The authors further opine that the institutions such as National Commodity and Derivatives Exchange Ltd. (NCDEX) and National Collateral Management Services Ltd. (NCMSL ) can play a major role in facilitating linkages among producer-growers and consumers and make available a world class infrastructure for the farmers.

Roads occupy the largest chunk of India's PPP infrastructure projects. Indeed, among other projects, roads have elicited maximum interest and optimism among private players for PPP. The economic betterment of the people with the development of highways is now palpable. With the expansion of the program, the mode of delivery has changed from budgetary resources to PPP and competitive bidding, as all stretches of highways do not have the same traffic levels. The paper, "Methods of Financing Road Projects in India", by Tamal Datta Chaudhuri examines the various methods of financing the road projects that are being used in India.

The Indian telecom industry has witnessed impressive growth in the recent past and has emerged as the third largest telecommunication network in the world after China and the US. The teledensity rose from 1.30% on March 31, 1996 to 18.2% by March 31, 2007 and crossed 25% in February 2008 with a total user base of 290 million. There is a growing disparity between telecom service penetration in urban and rural sectors. The urban teledensity as on March 31, 2007 was 49.5%, whereas, rural teledensity was 2%. Low rural teledensity leads to lack of quality access to markets, lack of supply to rural demands in a timely manner, etc. The paper, "Consumer Awareness of VAS of Telecom Sector of India: A Study of Vadodara District of Gujarat", by Shikha Ojha makes a detailed study of the use of Value Added Services (VAS) by the mobile phone subscribers in Vododara district of Gujarat using the linear probability model.

-- Pradeepta Kumar Samanta
Consulting Editor