As many as 35 public private partnership infrastructure projects worth around Rs 50,000 crore are stuck ever since the government issued new pre-bid documents in December last year.

The bone of contention is the new model request for qualification (RFQ) norm that seeks to restrict competition at the bid stage to only five-six companies—an aspect that is now being reviewed by the Finance Ministry. As a result of the contentious new guidelines, projects across sectors such as roads, ports, railways and civil aviation have been stalled—with none of the RFQs issued in the last six months translating into a project award yet.

The worst hit is the roads sector, where 26 RFQs issued since January for projects worth around Rs 27,000 crore have yet to make any progress. These include some big-ticket projects like six-laning of the 180-km Delhi-Agra highway and the 251-km Kishangarh-Udaipur highway.

The Indian Railway’s ambitious proposal to modernise the New Delhi railway station at a cost of Rs 10,000 crore is also moving at a snail’s pace, with the ministry unable to come out with a project-specific RFQ (based on the model RFQ) acceptable to bidders.

Plans to set to up two new coach factories in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar have also seen no forward movement. The Railway Ministry has already written to the Finance Ministry expressing difficulties in implementing the new model pre-bid norms.

The model RFQ was issued by the Finance Ministry after detailed discussions with various ministries and approved by the Committee on Infrastructure (CoI) headed by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.

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