Government has identified Rs 102 lakh crore infrastructure projects: Sitharaman

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Tuesday said the government has identified infrastructure projects worth Rs 102 lakh crore spread across 23 ministries, 18 states and union territories with another Rs 3 lakh crore of projects likely to come from the states.

"In line with the announcement made by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in his Independence Day speech to make infrastructure investment worth Rs 100 lakh crore for the next five years, a task force was formed to identify projects. Today, the task force has identified Rs 102 lakh crore worth of projects after conducting 70 stakeholder consultations in a short period of four months," Sitharaman said in a press conference here.

"In addition, Rs 3 lakh crore projects by states are likely to be added to the pipeline. So, in all, we will have a Rs 105 lakh crore total projects for the 100 lakh crore commitment we have made," she said.

The Finance Minister also announced that India's first National Infrastructure Pipeline (NIP) comprising the Centre, states and the private sector for detailed planning on infrastructure projects will be launched.

"We intend to launch the National Infrastructure Pipeline Coordination Mechanism comprising the Centre, states and private sector for detailed planning, information dissemination and monitoring implementation of the NIP framework," she said.

The minister said that the Centre and states will have an equal share of 39 per cent in the NIP while 22 per cent will be the share of the private sector.

"In NIP, the share of Centre is 39 per cent, 39 per cent will be the share of state and 22 per cent share of the private sector. We expect the private sector share to increase to at least 30 per cent by 2025. This is the first time that NIP has been formed which makes the job of monitoring, linking with the developers fairly well structured and easier," she said.

Sitharaman said that a total of 51 lakh crores that is about 5-6 per cent of the GDP has been spent on infrastructure in the last six years by Centre and states.