As India aims to become a $5 trillion economy by 2024, the Government has set up an inter-ministerial high-level task force to identify infrastructure projects for Rs 100 lakh crore ($1.4 trillion) over the next five years. The task force, headed by Department of Economic Affairs (DEA) Secretary Atanu Chakraborty, will draw up a ‘National Infrastructure Pipeline’ of Rs 100 lakh crore, the finance ministry said in a statement. This includes greenfield and brownfield projects costing above Rs 100 crore each.
The task force will comprise secretaries from different ministries, other senior officials and Niti Aayog CEO. It will identify technically feasible and financially or economically viable infrastructure projects that can be initiated in FY2019-20. This also lists the projects that can be included in the pipeline for each of the remaining five years between FY2021-25.
The task force constituted by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman will submit its report on the pipeline for 2019-20 by October 31, 2019, and on the indicative pipeline for 2021-25 by year-end, the ministry said.
In order to scale India’s GDP to USD 5 trillion by 2024-25, the country needs to spend about $1.4 trillion (Rs 100 lakh crore) from the FY2019-20 to FY2024-25 on infrastructure, the report added. In the past decade (FY2008-17), India invested about USD 1.1 trillion on infrastructure. However, the challenge now is to up the ante, so that lack of Infra does not become a concern.
In the I-Day speech, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had said that Rs 100 lakh crore would be invested in infrastructure over the next five years. These 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 ministry said, adding that in pursuance of this, an annual infrastructure pipeline would be developed.