Dinesh Sharma

New Delhi, Sept. 7: The Government of India gas set up a Task Force to speed up the construction of world-class infrastructure in order to give a fillip to the all-round economic development in the country. Investment in the infrastructure is necessary to sustain a high rate of economic growth.

The Task Force headed by the Secretary, Department by the Department of Economic Affairs, will map out a National Infrastructure Pipeline for each of the years from the financial year 2019-20 to the financial year 2025. Other members of the Task Force will include CEO of NITI Ayog and Secretaries of Expenditure and Administrative Ministry.

To achieve the GDP of $5 trillion by 2024-25, India needs to spend about $1.4 trillion (Rs. 100 lakh crore) over these years on infrastructure. In the past decade (FY 2008-17), India invested about $1.1 trillion on infrastructure. The challenge is to step-up annual infrastructure investment so that lack of infrastructure does not become a binding constraint on the growth of the Indian economy.

It may be mentioned that the Prime Minister, Mr. Narendra Modi had in his Independence Day speech had laid out his vision of high economic growth by announcing that Rs.100 lakh crore would be invested on infrastructure over the next five years.

Infrastructure projects will include social and economic infrastructure projects. To implement an infrastructure program of this scale, it is important that projects are adequately prepared and launched.  

 The Task Force will identify technically feasible and financially/ economically viable infrastructure projects that can be initiated in FY 2019-20. It will estimate annual infrastructure investment/capital costs and guide the ministries to identify the sources of financing.

The National Infrastructure Pipeline would include green-field and brown-field projects costing above Rs 100 crore each. Other qualifications for inclusion in the pipeline for the current year will include the availability of a DPR, feasibility of implementation, inclusion in the financing plan and readiness/ availability of administrative sanction. 

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