India to share infra planning tool PM GatiShakti with neighbouring nations

India will share the PM GatiShakti initiative with some of the neighbouring countries free of cost as the infrastructure planning tool is helping in effective planning and implementation of projects, a top government official said on Tuesday.

The initiative was launched to develop an integrated infrastructure to reduce logistics costs.

Secretary in the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT) Rajesh Kumar Singh said that as India has rolled out the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) in seven countries, the country similarly wants to showcase and integrate the PM GatiShakti initiative also.

"We want to showcase it and roll out and integrate and provide it free of cost to some of our neighbouring countries and eventually to other countries in the global south as a part of India's commitment to the global south," Singh said here at a function.

Over 1,400 layers of data, including those related to land, ports, forests, and highways, are available on the PM GatiShakti portal.

He also said that the department is working to enhance the usage of the portal for area planning in all the districts of India.

Area planning includes development of certain types of infrastructure around projects like a dam or a port.

"The idea is to ensure some kind of planning of infrastructure for that entire hinterland linked to that investment. That is an exercise we have just started. We intend to roll it out across the districts so that all the District Collectors have access to these data of this platform," Singh said.

It will empower them to plan better for their respective jurisdictions in terms of hard or social infrastructure like school and hospitals.