India will need to upgrade its infra to become a developed economy, says Jaitley

Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Thursday said that India has standardized itself largely towards seven to eight percent of growth rate, thus becoming the fasting growing amongst the major economies in the world.

"India will need to upgrade its infrastructure for the next two decades, with lot of investment and spending. One factor to be considered is that, Infrastructure is created when users pay," said Jaitley while addressing at the Defence Estates Day Lecture on 'India's Roadmap for a World Class Infrastructure'.

Jaitley said that India seems to have become a highly aspirational society, which is seen as a positive change by many, while highlighting that the Government has spent over Rs. 60,000 lakh crores on infrastructure since year 2007 to 2017.

"We created a National Infrastructure Investment Fund, in which govt. has put investment, and investments from foreign investors are being expected," added Jaitley after hinting over an investment worth Rs. 50,000 crores over the next five years on the infrastructure sector.

However, Jaitley also spoke about the contributions made towards the highways each year.

He said that the government is in process of awarding 10,000 km of highways each year.

Earlier on Tuesday, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley had said that with the recent economic reforms that have been implemented, the predominance of cash transactions is changing.

"Cash being a predominant mode is changing. We're being nudged into a system where convenience, security and proprietary lie in switching modes of payment. More companies can learn from initiatives like this," he said while inaugurating the Paytm Payments Bank.