Thank you, Madam Chair.
At one point in my life, I was involved in the development of an industrial project, having set up my own, and I've been involved in the financing of many industrial projects, though they were all small-scale industries in other countries.
One of the best ways to kill any project at a late and advanced stage is to bring in a third party. Any project, however small or big, is a complex thing. You cannot define a project by its minute parts; it is not possible.
Give me any project. In fact, when I was in a financial institution evaluating projects for financing, I could take a project and say, “Hey, do you want to fund this project?” Tell me, and then I can find 10 arguments for why we have to fund this project. Or, without reading it, if you do not want to fund this project, then I can prepare 10 points for why we should not fund it.
If you want to kill a project, especially a big, sensitive and important project, and if the intention is to kill the project, this is the time when you have to bring in a third party—any third party. It has to be a private sector company. A third party can come and they can put on the glasses and view the project. If the glasses they put on will help find the deficiencies, they can find 100 deficiencies; any complex project will have them.
In the project implementation period, as it is called in manufacturing projects, the project is set up and then it comes to commercial production. In between, a typical manufacturing project has an implementation period of 18 to 24 months, because the projects are always complex. If you bring in any party now and the party decides they want to kill or delay this project, they can come with a 100-page report on why we should not implement this project.
At the same time, you can also get consultants. If they want to push this project, they can give 100 reasons why we should go ahead with this. If the intention is to unnecessarily delay.... We have heard the witnesses. I did not ask any questions, but I heard the witnesses a second time today, both from the user's point of view and from that of the people who developed it, and I understand that projects are never perfect until and unless we start actually using them and implementing them.
Madam Chair, in my view, the only intention of this suggestion to bring in a third party at this stage is to kill the project. That's it. There's no other way I can put this. Any complex project, in my experience, which was in manufacturing projects, is always a complex entity. It is almost a living organism. It will have some defects, just like no human body is perfect. We all have defects in different parts, but we'll all settle down after some time and come to a routine, so I fully oppose this particular proposal.