Wednesday, December 21, 2016

Second Nepal Infrastructure Summit in February

The second Nepal Infrastructure Summit is scheduled for February 19-20, 2017 to give momentum to sluggish infrastructure growth of the country.
The summit is being organised jointly by Confederation of Nepalese Industries (CNI), Youth Community for Nepalese Contractors (YCNC) in association with different government agencies as well as bilateral and multilateral development partners, CNI president Haribhakta Sharma said here today at a press meet.
Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal (Prachanda) is scheduled to inaugurate the summit as the chief guest. Similarly, railway minister of India Suresh Prabhakar Prabhu will be the Guest of Honour and keynote speaker of the summit, he said, adding that investors, consulting service providers, builders, thought leaders, government agencies, diplomats, development partners, legislators, non-state actors from South Asia, South East Asia and other countries will be participating in the summit.
The Summit will brainstorm on Infrastructure: The Big Picture, Barriers and Constraints in attracting Private and Public Investment, Expediting Public Private Partnership (PPP), Financing Resilient Infrastructure, and Successful PPP Model: Global and regional Perspective.
Nepal suffers an infrastructure deficit on an epic scale, stifling vast human potentials on several fronts. A World Bank estimate of the country's 'infrastructure gap' pegs investment needs at between 8 per cent and 12 per cent of national income this decade. Nepal's medium-term ambition is to become a middle-income nation by 2030, while graduating out of the status of a least developed country (LDC) by 2022.
"This is only possible with high growth rates sustained by productive capital formation," Sharma said, adding that this demands rapid development of infrastructure driven largely by a private sector – local and foreign – that has the technical, managerial and financial clout to deliver efficient, high-quality and cost-effective results on the ground.
The second Nepal Infrastructure Summit also aims at facilitating discourse on indispensability of private sector in infrastructure development, he added. "The primary objective of the summit is to attract large scale private investment in areas of Nepal's core needs and strengths; forge stronger networks and alliances in the region for seamless connectivity; and raise awareness on why investment in infrastructure needs an urgent push in the country."
The summit will showcase the project bank developed by Investment Board Nepal (IBN) which will comprise around 50 viable infrastructure projects.
In the meantime, CNI in collaboration with Idea Studio, will collect various infrastructure ideas from different sectors of the communities to come up with a creative and an innovative infrastructure – transportation, irrigation, energy, housing, digital etc – IDEAs to solve the existing epic infrastructure deficit and address to the possible future need for our country's development.
The summit will focus on the strategic vision of infrastructure, value proposition, competitiveness, policy particularly on land acquisition and environmental clearance; and regulatory enablers and business environment, Sharma informed. "The event will consolidate and build upon the achievements of the first Nepal Infrastructure Summit held in November 2014," he added.
Second in the series, Nepal Infrastructure Summit 2017 aims to attract large-scale private investment in areas of Nepal’s core needs and strengths, he said, adding that infrastructure summit not only targets to draw big investment in infrastructure sector, but also forge stronger network and alliance in South Asia for seamless connectivity.

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