Setting the agenda for providing high growth enabling infrastructure, the Economic Survey on Thursday called for enforcing user charges and a regulatory framework that fosters competition to ensure effective delivery of infrastructure services.
Noting healthy contributions from all segments in the handsome 5.4 per cent growth rate registered by infrastructure sector in April-December 2002-03, the survey said success of policies must be judged by the quality, quantity and prices that end-users are charged for these services, and comparisons with global standards.
Over a decade of focus on infrastructure policy has led to substantial progress in some areas and broad outlines now emerging are to "involve new institutional arrangements, well enforced user charges, exploit new technologies, private sector production, and a regulatory framework that fosters competition," the survey tabled in Parliament said.
Underscoring the need for creating a sound regulatory framework, it said "in areas like rural infrastructure, where cost recovery is innately difficult, there is a greater role of government to foster infrastructure provision even if it is not directly profitable."
While telecom has been a success story, the Rs 58,000 crore National Highway Development Project was making rapid progress. However, railways still require substantial reforms in its functioning and establishing an institutional mechanism to cut cost, it said.