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Presentation on "Infrastructure and City Competitiveness in India"
Presentation by: Dr. Somik V. Lall
1 February 2011
NIUA, New Delhi
A presentation on, “Infrastructure and
City Competitiveness in India” was made by Dr. Somik Lall on Tuesday
February 1, 2011 at NIUA, New Delhi.
Dr. Somik Lall is Senior Economic Counselor to the National Transport Policy Development Committee and is currently on external service from the World Bank. He has been a core team member of the 2009 World Development Report "Reshaping Economic Geography".
The presentation was based on a paper by Somik V. Lall, Hyoung Gun Wang, and Uwe Deichmann. This paper examined how the combination of local and national infrastructure supply improve city competitiveness, measured as the city’s share of national private investment. For the empirical analysis, it collected city-level data for India, and link private investment decisions to infrastructure provision. It found that a city’s proximity to international ports and highways connecting large domestic markets has the largest effect on its attractiveness for private investment. In comparison, the supply of local infrastructure services – such as municipal roads, street lighting, water supply, and drainage – enhance competitiveness, but their impacts are much smaller. Thus, while local efforts are important for competitiveness, they are less likely to be successful in cities distant from the country’s main trunk infrastructure. In terms of financing local infrastructure, we find that a city’s ability to raise its own source revenues by means of local taxes and user fees increases infrastructure supply, whereas as inter governmental transfers do not have statistically significant effects.
There were extensive discussions at the end of presentation. Prof. Om Mathur, NIPFP chaired the meeting and Dr. Debolina Kundu, NIUA gave vote of thanks.
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- Paper