Rs 100 lakh crore will be spend on infrastructure to achieve 5 trillion dollar GDP: Sitharaman

New Delhi, Jan 1 (KNN) Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman has said that India needs to spend Rs 100 lakh crore in order to achieve 5 trillion dollar Gross Domestic Product (GDP) by 2024-25.

''To achieve the GDP of 5 trillion dollar by 2024-25, India needs to spend about 1.4 trillion dollar (Rs 100 lakh crore) over these years on infrastructure. In the past decade (FY 2008-17), India invested about 1.1 trillion dollar on infrastructure,'' she said while addressing a press conference here on Tuesday.

The Minister further said that 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. She also indicated that Government will examine the recommendations of the Task Force and take action early.

Prime Minister in his Independence Day-2019 speech highlighted that Rs.100 lakh crore would be invested on infrastructure over the next five years including social and economic infrastructure projects, the Minister added.

''To achieve this objective, a Task Force was constituted to draw up the National Infrastructure Pipeline (NIP) for each of the years from FY 2019-20 to FY 2024-25 with the approval of the Finance Minister. The Task Force is chaired by Secretary, DEA with CEO (NITI Aayog), Secretary (Expenditure), Secretary of the Administrative Ministries, and Additional Secretary (Investments), DEA as members and Joint Secretary (IPF), DEA as Member Secretary,'' Finance ministry said in an official statement.

The first meeting of the Task Force was held in September 2019 after conducting 70 stakeholder consultations in a short period of four months.

On the basis of the information compiled as on date, total project capital expenditure in infrastructure sectors in India during the fiscals 2020 to 2025 is projected at over Rs 102 lakh crore.

During the fiscals 2020 to 2025, sectors such as Energy (24%), Roads (19%), Urban (16%), and Railways (13%) amount to around 70% of the projected capital expenditure in infrastructure in India.

Out of the total expected capital expenditure of Rs. 102 lakh crore, projects worth Rs 42.7 lakh crore (42%) are under implementation, projects worth Rs 32.7 lakh crore (32%) are in conceptualization stage and rest are under development. It is expected that projects of certain states, who are yet to communicate their pipelines, would be added to the pipeline in due course.

 The Task Force in its detailed report has given recommendations on changes required to several key sectoral policies and other reform initiatives to be initiated by Central and State Governments. A monitoring mechanism has also been suggested to ensure timely implementation.

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