Infrastructure projects worth NIS 196b in government pipeline

The list distributed by the Prime Minister's Office is designed to enhance control and to attract foreign investment to Israel.Under Menachem Begin Road in Tel Aviv, not a long way from the Azrieli towers and the busiest road intersection in the nation, an underground station is being built for the Red Line of the Tel Aviv Light Rail.The state is expected to invest NIS 16.2 billion in constructing this line and the work is at its height: eight tremendous tunneling machines - Wonder Woman, Ahuva Ozeri, Rosa Parks, Golda Meir, Margaret Thatcher, and two named after Chinese heroines chosen by the Chinese construction company picked by the Chinese construction company- are currently completing the digging of a pair of eleven kilometer tunnels that will take the light rail line under Tel Aviv.In the coming years, NTA - Metropolitan Mass Transit System Ltd., which is in charge of the undertaking for the project on behalf state, will be caught up with building the underground stations and installing the various systems along the length of the line. The official fulfillment date of October 2021 makes the Red Line one of the few mega-projects in Israel due to be ready by 2022.The Red Line is only one of 204 mega projects intend to get in progress in the following four years, as indicated by the schedule published today by the Prime Minister's Office for the second year. The record entitled Infrastructure for Growth in 2019 unites all the physical infrastructure projects that satisfy the accompanying criteria: an estimation of at any rate NIS 100 million and in the government pipeline, that is, experiencing a planning or endorsements process at government ministries or at agencies for which the ministries are responsible.The Ministry of Transport leads the list, with 64 projects worth an aggregate of NIS 122 billion. It is followed by the Ministry of National Infrastructures, Energy and Water Resources, with ventures adding up to NIS 39 billion in power, fuels, powers, water and sewage. The absolute estimation of the considerable number of projects is assessed at NIS 196 billion, which speaks to great development in comparison with the first list, which was published in September 2017 and contained 147 projects worth an aggregate NIS 116 million.How did the total esteem hop by NIS 80 billion inside a year? Prime Minister's Office senior officials Oren Cohen and Roei Dror clarify that there are two fundamental reasons. First and foremost, the current year's list is progressively far reaching and increasingly detailed: it incorporates the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Finance, and the Ministry of Construction and Housing, whose projects were not in the past list. Projects such as the Red Line in Tel Aviv also appear for the first time this year.The second reason is new undertakings included since the previous list was distributed. The most unmistakable precedent is power projects worth a total NIS 10 billion that arose in the wake of the reform at Israel Electric Corporation: construction of two new power plants at Hadera and a series of transmission projects.several projects were left off the list, and in certainty the estimation of undertakings that are excluded surpasses that of those that are. The biggest of these is the Tel Aviv Metro project, which is required to cost NIS 150 billion. The high-speed railway to Eilat (some NIS 50 billion) and the railway to Kiryat Shemona (NIS 10 billion) are also missing.The reason is that these are projects that have not yet been budgeted, and some of them have not yet undergone economic viability examinations and have not been approved by government resolution. Moreover, some of the projects that are on the list, such as the IDF intelligence center in the Negev, appear without a price tag.The upgrades in the manner in which the current year's list has been aggregated make it possible to monitor the timetables and status of the various projects more effectively, andand the budget estimates are more detailed than they were previously. The list's compilers promise to continue to improve the quality of the data, and to include, for example, details of the investment required by source of finance. The model for the list, incidentally, is lists published by the Canadian and UK governments.What is the list for? In any case, it serves the purpose of monitoring and control over time. The thought is that distribution of timetables and spending plans nails down the projects and settles on it hard for decision makers to drag their feet or to exceed budgets, since they will be required to provide explanations.The second design is to make a bank of projects available to overseas investors. The plan to draw up the list started in a meeting by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and then prime Minister's Office director general Eli Groner with representatives of BlackRock, the world's biggest resource manager, who grumbled that they had surplus cash to invest yet ashortage of available projects.The third, and undeclared, point of the list is to advance the PPP (public-private partnership) financing model. Projects examined for suitability for a PPP format are marked as such. The proportion of projects examined is 27% in this year's list, which compares with 15% last year, something that the Prime Minister's Office sees as an achievement.