Economic Survey: India needs to invest $1.4 trillion on infra sector in 2020-25

The country needs to spend about $1.4 trillion for infrastructure development in 2020-25 mostly in road, railways, electricity and shipping sectors to achieve its target to become a $ 5 trillion economy by 2024-25, says the Economic Survey.

"To achieve the GDP of $5 trillion by 2024-25, India needs to spend about $ 1.4 trillion on infrastructure. The challenge is to step-up annual infrastructure investment so that lack of infrastructure does not become a binding constraint on the growth of the Indian economy," the Survey tabled in Parliament said.

With the poor connectivity, power shortages, inadequate transport hit the overall growth performance, the survey says there is need to invest on improving infrastructure.

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For a smooth and fast development, India needs adequate and timely investment in quality infrastructure, it said, adding the report of the Task Force on National Infrastructure Pipeline has projected total infrastructure investment of Rs 102 lakh crore during the period FY2020 to 2025 in India.

The Survey said universal electrification progress has been made in generation and transmission of electricity. The installed capacity has increased from 3,56,100 MW in March 2019, to 3,64,960 MW as on October 31 2019.

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Terming road transport as the dominant mode of transportation, the Survey said total investment in the road and highways sector has gone up more than three times in five years from 2014-15 to 2018-19.

Taking a comprehensive view of civil aviation, the Survey observed that India has 136 commercially managed airports by Airport Authority of India and six under public-private partnerships for operation, maintenance and development of airports.

The Pradhan Mantri Awaas Yojana–Urban (PMAY-U) launched in June 2015, the Survey said is one of the largest housing schemes of the world covering entire urban India and is being implemented through four verticals.

The scheme is moving towards achieving the vision of "pucca" house to every household by 2020, it said adding 32 lakh houses have been completed and delivered.

The Survey noted that since the launch of the Smart City Mission in 100 cities 5,151 projects worth more than Rs 2 lakh crore are at various stages of implementation and added a total of 1,290 projects worth Rs 22,569 crore have been completed and are operational.