INDIA: Supporting India in prioritization and project selection of its National Infrastructure Pipeline and review of its existing PPP framework

In the context of India's post-Covid recovery, the proposed activity will assist the Department of Economic Affairs (DEA) with the screening and prioritization of India’s National Infrastructure Pipeline (NIP).  The NIP is a program (list) of social and economic infrastructure projects, launched by the Indian Government in 2019-20, with an initial sanctioned amount of US$1.4 trillion.

This screening exercise is planned to be completed within the ambit of three major activities: i) development of the Infrastructure Prioritization Framework (IPF) for India’s National Infrastructure Pipeline and mainstream climate change considerations, ii) a pilot exercise, where the proposed framework will be applied for one particular sector to test the feasibility standards and for successful implementation of the newly developed screening tool, iii) review of the existing PPP practice in India, in comparison with the global standards and to opportunities for reforming the PPP models for the NIP in India.

A major component of the activity will be to incorporate the application of climate resilience as an important criteria for consideration during project preparation. Training will be provided to key Government of India (GOI) personnel to screen climate risks and opportunities in PPP project pipeline. This will be done via a toolkit currently being developed under an ongoing CREST (Climate Resilience & Environmental Sustainability Technical Advisory) knowledge activity. Further details on this aspect and other activities are provided in the other sections of this application.