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The Finance Ministry has notified India Infrastructure Project Development Fund Scheme (IIPDF Scheme) for the financial support of project development expenses of public private partnership (PPP) projects.

It was notified on Thursday. As a central sector scheme, the IIPDF Scheme will aid the development of quality PPP projects by providing necessary funding support to the project sponsoring authorities, both in the central and state governments. This is for creating a shelf of bankable viable PPP projects for achieving the vision of modern infrastructure for the country, an official statement said.

Funding under IIPDF Scheme is in addition to the already operational scheme for financial support to PPPs in infrastructure (Viability Gap Funding scheme) notified on December 7, 2020, through which infrastructure projects undertaken through PPP mode that are economically justified but commercially unviable are supported.

A key step in structuring quality PPP projects is to provide quality advisory and consultancy services to the project sponsoring authorities (PSAs).

However, the procurement of such services is a time consuming and difficult process often resulting into delays in onboarding of the appropriate transaction advisers (TAs) or non-optimal structuring of PPP projects.

To address these issues, the Department of Economic Affairs (DEA) had notified a panel of pre-qualified TAs on July 1, 2022 and developed a manual for utilisation of this panel.

Now, the IIPDF scheme will provide necessary support to the PSAs, both in the Central and state governments, by extending financial assistance in meeting the cost of transaction advisors and consultants engaged in the development of PPP projects.