CCI Clears Rs 70,000 Crore Investment Proposals

In yet another move to revive investment sentiment in the country, the Cabinet Committee on Investments (CCI) has approved infrastructure projects worth Rs 70,000 crore. With this, the government has tried to clear the logjam in investments - mainly in the Oil & Gas and Power sector.

In the last month too, the CCI had given approval to 5 Oil & Gas blocks of RIL located near the east coast. These blocks were earlier held up due to security reasons.

In its latest move, the committee has cleared 13 power projects worth Rs 33,000 crore. These projects were either pending due to land acquisition or environment related issues which had impacted their fuel linkages. It is believed that the cleared proposals include some projects of Adani Power, Lanco Infra, GMR Infra and Jindal Power.

Repeating the feat, CCI also cleared investment proposals in the Oil & Gas sector worth USD 7 billion. This includes 13 Oil & Gas blocks of RIL, 14 blocks of ONGC and one each of Cairn India and Oil India.

While the new investment in the Power sector is being cleared, the much awaited coal price pooling has been deferred. Some news reports have quoted the Prime minister saying that the coal price pooling is currently not an actionable point, which could mean that coal price pooling may never come up.

The point being, the clearing of new investments sends a strong message to the business committee.