The government has constituted an Empowered Group of Secretaries (EGoS), headed by the Cabinet Secretary with Secretaries of 20 Infrastructure and Economic User Ministries as members, to monitor the implementation of PM GatiShakti.

The first meeting of EGoS was held yesterday under the chairmanship of the Cabinet Secretary. The CEO Niti Aayog was a special invitee for the first meeting. The EGoS reviewed the progress made so far.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched PM GatiShakti National Master Plan for providing multimodal connectivity to various Economic Zones in the country.  It aims to reduce the logistics cost.  Currently, the logistics cost in India is about 13 per cent of the GDP whereas in other developed countries it is to the extent of 8 per cent. The government is committed to reduce the cost of logistics to ensure competitiveness of the manufacturing sector, better realisation of prices to farmers and availability of goods at cheaper prices to consumers.

Bhaskaracharya Institute for Space Applications and Geoinformatics (BISAG-N), which has developed the National Master Plan, informed the EGoS that over 300 layers of data has been mapped on to the GIS based national master plan.  It was further informed that all the central ministries and most of the state governments have started updating their required layers.

The Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT), being the nodal department for PM GatiShatki, briefed the meeting on the administrative arrangements made for monitoring and coordination of PM GatiShakti.

The Network Planning Group (NPG), comprising representatives from 7 central ministries, has already been constituted. A high-powered expert group of professionals is being constituted to support the NPG.

The EGoS made several important decisions in the meeting. It has been decided to compile the infrastructural gaps as felt by various economic ministries. This is to be forwarded to the concerned Infrastructure ministry for appropriate consideration to include in the annual action plan for next financial year. A decision was made to study the multimodal connectivity to all the economic zones in the country on priority so that gaps are identified.  Any such system or process, which is causing enhanced logistics cost are to be identified and deliberated upon and measures are to be taken, including necessary administrative decisions, so as to reduce the cost.