Govt's FY27 capex to focus on highways, rail, metros: Expenditure Secy

The key focus of the government's ₹12.2 trillion capex for the next fiscal will be mainly on sectors like shipbuilding, national highways, railways, and metro train projects, Expenditure Secretary V Vualnam said.

The government has budgeted total expenditure in 2026-27 at over ₹53.47 trillion, of which about ₹12.22 trillion is projected to be the capital expenditure, meaning it would be spent on building physical infrastructure.

In a post-Budget interview to PTI, Vualnam said the sectors, which have huge ongoing and new projects, like the national highways, railways, and the urban sector, to the extent of metro train projects, will continue to dominate the government public capex spending in the next fiscal.

"Shipbuilding has become an infrastructure sector, and will also now be a big player. We are very keen to improve our share in shipbuilding (globally). Of India's import-export cargo, just about 5 per cent goes on India-owned ships. About ₹6 trillion (annually) is spent on rentals to foreign companies (for shipping goods). So, that will, again, come up, and there are quite a few, and it will remain our focus," Vualnam said.

In September last year, the Cabinet had approved a ₹69,725 crore package to revitalise India's shipbuilding and maritime sector. The package introduces a four-pillar approach designed to strengthen domestic capacity, improve long-term financing, promote greenfield and brownfield shipyard development, enhance technical capabilities and skilling, and implement legal, taxation, and policy reforms to create a robust maritime infrastructure.

For the current fiscal year, the government has given a revised estimate of capex at ₹10.95 trillion, lower than the ₹11.21 trillion budgeted originally.

Public capex has increased manifold from ₹2 trillion in FY 2014-15 to ₹12.2 trillion in 2026-27. The capex estimate for FY27 is 4.4 per cent of the GDP, the highest ever.