Nod for projects worth Rs 20 lakh crore from PMO group

The Prime Minister's Office (PMO) is focussing on investing Rs 20 lakh crore in more than 500 projects. The Project Monitoring Group (PMG) that works under the PMO has cleared 276 projects, stalled due to various reasons and accounting for investment of nearly Rs 10 lakh crore, in the last two years. Another 258 projects, with investment of more than Rs 10 lakh crore, will be cleared soon.    Most of the projects include those of roads, coal, power and railways. Roughly half the projects are public sector and the rest private plus PPP (public-private partnership).    As per reports, PMG works on a web platform – a portal designed for investors facing clearance issues acts as a central data platform. Each project is assigned a unique ID and the hurdles a project faces are flagged. Once clearance hurdles for a certain number of projects have been identified, PMG calls for a meeting with chief secretaries of states where the projects are located, and concerned investors.   Since 80 per cent of clearance problems are state-level, PMO has reduced the number of such clearances from 63 to 31, and has asked all states to digitise the process of applying for these clearances. States that have benefitted most from PMG clearances are Odisha, Jharkhand, Maharashtra, Chhattisgarh and Karnataka. Bihar has been using the PMG portal frequently of late. States have been asked to create their own version of PMG portal for investment below Rs 1,000 crore.