Centre set to develop annual infrastructure pipeline to achieve $5 trillion GDP

Ministry of Finance on Saturday said that to achieve the GDP of 5 trillion US dollar economy by 2024-25, India needs to spend about Rs 100 lakh crore over these years on infrastructure and for this, an annual infrastructure pipeline would be developed.

In an official statement, the Ministry of Finance said, in pursuance of achieving $5 trillion GDP, an annual infrastructure pipeline would be developed.

To achieve this task, a Task Force under the chairmanship of Secretary (DEA) has been constituted by Union Finance Minister to draw up a National Infrastructure Pipeline for each of the years from FY 2019-20 to FY 2024-25.

Availability of quality infrastructure is a pre-requisite to achieve broad-based and inclusive growth on a sustainable basis. Investment in infrastructure is also necessary for sustaining the high growth rate of India.

In the past decade (FY 2008-17), India had invested about $1.1 trillion on infrastructure. The challenge is to step-up annual infrastructure investment so that lack of infrastructure does not become a binding constraint on the growth of the Indian economy.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi in his Independence Day speech 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 program of this scale, it is important that projects are adequately prepared and launched.

The Task Force will submit its report on the pipeline for FY 2019-20 by October 31, 2019, and on the indicative pipeline for FY 2021-25 by December 31, 2019.