Karvy Stock Broking Limited recently hosted an 'Investor Conference' with Mr. Kamal Nath (Minister of Road Transport and Highways) in Delhi with an objective to facilitate in-depth communication between the government and investors about the road sector.Let me copy the key takeaways from this conference as set in their infrastructure update:• The government is focused toward its target of constructing 7,000km/year (with a run rate of 20km/day) of highways. About 60% of these projects would be BOT toll projects, 25% as annuity projects and the remaining 15% would be developed as EPC contracts.• The government has planned to award 9,000-9,500km for FY11 in which ~4,000km has been already awarded and 5000km-5500km is due for awarding in next four months. Post awarding of all these projects the WIP of road projects would increase to around 18,000-19,000km from 14,000 km which will lead towards the path for construction of 20km/day in FY12.• Delay in awarding of projects if any was due to shortage of manpower at NHAI and request from banks to staggered awarding of projects.• The government has undertaken various measures to streamline its policy framework in the model concession agreement and it would continue to do the same in future.• Land acquisition has been the major cause of delay and cost over runs in the past. NHAI has set up a special land acquisition units at the state level to quickly resolve issues of land.• Concern of unviable project is due to conservative approach of forecast for traffic at 5% rate. Over the last one year, strong auto growth is indicative of the strong traffic potential.• The government has planned to set-up ~$50bn infra debt fund (not specific to road sector) which should take off in next three months. This fund will be used for refinancing of bank loans or direct investment in physical infrastructure projects through PPP route. This will increase the interest of banks in financing the long term projects and speed up the financial closure of the projects.Remember we recently posted a long report about the construction industry in India. This report gives you a detailed analysis of six of the most important Indian infrastructure firms:

• Hindustan Construction Company
• IVRCL Infrastructure
• Nagarjuna Conestruction
• Patel Engineering
• Gayatri Projects
• Madhucon Projects

This time we also want to share with you this other report that analyzes Ramky Infrastructure. Remember that Ramky Infrastructure recently made its Initial public offer (IPO) and got oversubscribed 2.89 times by the end of the issue.