New Delhi: To augment India’s infrastructure and create jobs, the government has launched Rs 103 lakh crore infra projects besides providing about Rs 1.70 lakh crore for transport infrastructure and accelerating highways construction, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said Saturday.
Presenting the Union Budget 2020-21, Sitharaman said focus is on infrastructure for economic development and 6,500 projects across sectors under National Infrastructure Pipeline (NIP) envision ease of living for citizens.
“In his Independence Day speech 2019, Prime Minister had highlighted that Rs 100 lakh crore would be invested on infrastructure over the next 5 years. As a follow-up measure, I had launched December 31, 2019 the NIP of Rs 103 lakh crore. It consists of more than 6,500 projects across sectors and are classified as per their size and stage of development,” she said. “About Rs 22,000 crore has already been provided, as support to Infrastructure Pipeline,” added Sitharaman.
Terming the budget growth-oriented, Road Transport and Highways Minister Nitin Gadkari said it has given a massive boost to investment in infrastructure, which in turn would help revive industrial production and generate employment opportunities, creating more than two crore jobs.
These new projects will include housing, safe drinking water, access to clean and affordable energy, health-care, educational institutes, railway stations, airports, bus terminals, metro and railway transportation, logistics and warehousing, irrigation projects, etc.
NIP envisions improving the ease of living for each individual citizen in the country. It will bring in generic and sectoral reforms in development, operation and maintenance of these infrastructure projects, said Sitharaman. “I propose to provide about Rs 1.70 lakh crore for transport Infrastructure in 2020-21,” Sitharaman stated.
Accelerated development of highways will be undertaken which will include development of 2,500-km access control highways, 9,000-km of economic corridors, 2,000-km of coastal and land port roads and 2,000-km of strategic highways.
Delhi-Mumbai Expressway and two other packages would be completed by 2023 and work on Chennai-Bangalore Expressway would also be started.
Sitharaman said under electronic tolling on national highways, FASTag mechanism enables greater commercialisation of highways so that NHAI can raise more resources. “I propose to monetise at least twelve lots of highway bundles of over 6000-km before 2024,” she said.
Agencies