Budget 2019: Where Sitharaman can find a cool $1 trn for infra investment

It's what economists call a classic "crowding out" of the private sector. India Inc. is clamoring for lower costs of capital, but the level of public debt is keeping them elevated

India will need $1 trillion of infrastructure investment to nudge annual GDP growth higher by just half a percentage point in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s second five-year term. Of this, at least 55% will have to come from public resources. Where’s the money?

Those figures from an analysis by the Confederation of Indian Industry are the No. 1 challenge for Nirmala Sitharaman as the country’s new finance minister gets ready to present her first annual budget on Friday.

While the scale of investment isn’t very different from what India spent in the past five years, the sorry state of corporate