Union Budget 2025 | Infrastructure investment needs to be scaled up in next 2 decades, says Economic Survey

New Delhi: Investment in the infrastructure sector in India needs to be continuously scaled up over the next two decades to sustain a high rate of growth, said the Economic Survey 2024-25 tabled in Parliament on Friday.

"India needs a continued step-up of infrastructure investment over the next two decades to sustain a high rate of growth," the survey said.

In the first quarter of FY25, the constraints on new approvals and spending during the general elections, coupled with heavy monsoon in many regions, affected the progress of the infrastructure spending, said the latest survey.

However, the speed of capex picked up between July and November last year.

The capital expenditure of the Centre for the current fiscal has been budgeted at about 3.3 times the capex for FY20, the document said.

It further said that disaster-resilient urbanisation, public transport, preservation and upkeep of heritage sites, monuments and tourist destinations, as well as rural public infrastructure, including connectivity, call for greater attention.

"Our net zero commitments entail added stress on creating renewable energy capacities," it added.

Stating that there are binding budget constraints to the different tiers of government, it said private participation should speed up in many critical infrastructure sectors in many ways like programme and project planning, financing, construction, maintenance, monetisation and impact assessment.

"Our infrastructure programme supports a variety of PPP models like build-operate-transfer (toll and annuity), design-build-finance-operate-transfer, hybrid annuity model and toll-operate-transfer," it said.

The government has instituted many debottlenecking and facilitatory mechanisms like the National Infrastructure Pipeline, National Monetisation Pipeline and PM-Gati Sakti that have made progress.

Financial market regulators have introduced reforms to encourage private participation, it said, adding that still the uptake of private enterprise is limited in many core sectors.

The strategy to step up private participation needs coordinated action of all stakeholders involved like governments at different tiers, financial market players, project management experts and planners, and the private sector.

"Capacities to conceptualise projects, develop sector-specific innovative strategies for execution, and, develop high-expertise areas such as risk and revenue sharing, contract management, conflict resolution and project closure need to improve substantially," it said.

The efforts of the Centre need to be supplemented with wholehearted acceptance of the need for public-private partnerships in infrastructure across the country.

Union Budget 2025 | Nirmala Sitharaman, who continues to be Finance Minister, will present her record 8th Union Budget this time. While inflation has burnt a hole in the pockets of 'aam janata', reports suggest there might be a tax relief for those making up to Rs 15 lakh per year. Track the latest coverage, live news, in-depth opinions, and analysis only on Deccan Herald. Also follow us on WhatsApp, LinkedIn, X, Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram.