The government on Saturday set up an inter-ministerial task force to identify infrastructure projects that can be kicked off in the current financial year and can be included in the Rs 100-trillion plan for the sector in the next five years.
The finance ministry said the task force will draw up a plan for the ‘national infrastructure pipeline’ from 2019-20 to 2024-25.
The announcement comes at a time when growth has slowed to a six-year low of 5 per cent in April-June, amid sluggish demand, a slowdown in the automobile sector and job losses.
The government has been taking steps to bring India back to the growth trajectory and achieve the target of a $5 trillion economy by 2024-25.
The challenge is to step-up annual infrastructure investment so that lack of infrastructure does not hold back the Indian economy, the ministry said.
The terms of reference of the task force will include identifying technically feasible and financially viable infrastructure projects that can be initiated in 2019-20.
The task force will list the projects that can be included in the pipeline for each of the remaining five years between 2021 and 2025, estimate annual infrastructure investment or capital costs, guide the ministries in identifying appropriate sources of financing and suggest measures to monitor the projects so that cost and time overrun is minimised.
The task force will be headed by the economic affairs secretary while the chief executive officer of NITI Aayog, the expenditure secretary and secretaries of various infrastructure ministries along with the additional secretary and joint secretary of the economic affairs department will be members.
It will submit its report on the pipeline for 2019-20 by October 31, 2019, and on the indicative pipeline for 2021-25 by December 31, 2019.
“To implement an infrastructure programme of this scale, it is important that projects are adequately prepared and launched,” the ministry said. To achieve this an annual infrastructure pipeline will be developed.
“A task force under the chairmanship of the secretary (DEA) has been constituted by finance minister to draw up a National Infrastructure Pipeline for each of the years from 2019-20 to 2024-25,” it said.
The task force will plan a robust marketing of the pipeline of projects requiring private investment through the India Investment Grid and National Investment and Infrastructure Fund.
The plan to set up a taskforce for infrastructure projects was part of the various measures announced by finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman on August 23 to boost growth.
This initiative is expected to boost both growth and creation of jobs. These projects will be monitored actively to accelerate capital expenditure and investments in the economy.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi, in his Independence Day speech had highlighted that Rs 100 lakh crore would be invested in infrastructure over the next five years.
Infrastructure projects will include social and economic infrastructure projects. To implement an infrastructure programme of this scale, it is important that projects are adequately prepared and launched.
In pursuance of this, an annual infrastructure pipeline would be developed.
