Govt to rope in private players to build roads, hospitals

Government will rope in private players to develop the infrastructure in the state including the roads and hospitals due to the shortage of funds.
In reply to question of CPI (M) MLA, M Y Tarigami, which was asked by NC legislator Devinder Singh Rana in Tarigami’s absence, Finance Minister, Haseeb Drabu, said the government has already sanctioned the policy to implement projects in nine sectors including roads and health in the private public partnership (PPP) mode.
He said vide government order no 238-F of 2015 dated December 8 2015, the government has accorded sanction to the implementation of the projects in the PPP mode to rope in the investment in these sectors.
Drabu said besides roads and health, other sectors which have been approved for investment by private players are tourism, housing, urban development, sports, technical education, health, horticulture and industries and mining.
He said the government has also sanctioned creation of steering committee under the chairmanship of Chief Secretary to oversee the selection, formulation and implementation of the PPP investment.
The FM also acknowledged that in view of the shortage of funds, there was a massive liability on account of the GP fund deposits of the employees.
He admitted that liabilities on account of GP fund are not cleared in time in absence of sufficient financial resources.
“The Finance department takes a cutoff date upto which the liabilities are cleared across the board in all the treasuries of the state and the liability on account of the GP fund has been cleared upto May 10, 2016,” he said.
Drabu said the remaining liabilities will be cleared as and when the resource position of the state improves.
In reply to the question about credit deposit (CD) ratio of different banks, the FM said the CD ratio as on March 31, 2016 in respect of all the banks operating in the state has been 49 percent against the national average of 60 percent.
Giving the bank wise breakup of the details, it has been revealed that the advances of the banks are significantly lower than their deposits in the state. Against the deposit of Rs 52743 crore of the Jammu and Kashmir Bank, the advances as on March 31, 2016, have been 25633 crore.
Drabu also admitted that the lending in the agriculture sector remains to be low.