FM reviews progress of projects under national infrastructure pipeline

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman reviewed the progress of projects worth Rs 3.6 trn under the national infrastructure pipeline

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Wednesday reviewed the progress of projects worth Rs 3.6 lakh crore under the National Infrastructure Pipeline (NIP), an official statement said.

The projects are being implemented by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, and the Department of Water Resources, River Development and Ganga Rejuvenation.

During the meeting, the finance minister asked the two ministries/ departments to push infra expenditure by effectively implementing all NIP projects in time and ensure quick resolution of issues in coordination with state governments and other ministries.

Secretaries of these two departments were asked to promote investible projects by holding discussions with prospective investors, the finance ministry said in the statement.

This was the second review meeting by Sitharaman with various ministries and departments to monitor and accelerate NIP project implementation.

"In the review meeting, in addition to infra spending along with annual targeted and achieved expenditure by these two ministries/departments, various initiatives taken by them to expedite were also discussed.

"24 projects worth Rs 80,915 crore under the Ministry of Health and 10 large projects worth Rs 2,79,604 crore under the Department of Water Resources were reviewed in detail along with bottlenecks, if any, being faced in the project implementation," it said.

It was explained in the meeting that despite the pandemic, the NIP has managed to achieve substantial progress.

The NIP was launched with 6,835 projects, which has now been expanded to more than 7,300. Projects identified under the NIP require investment of a whopping Rs 111 lakh crore during 2020-25.

Many ministries/departments have shown substantial progress in project implementation and expenditure, especially in the second quarter of 2020-21, the statement said.

In addition, the majority of ministries/departments have targeted substantially high infra expenditure in the current fiscal than the actual expenditure of FY'20.

Ministries were also asked to update the National Infrastructure Pipeline dashboard regularly to allow seamless online monitoring.