Chennai: The Budget estimates that the country needs Rs two lakh crore for infrastructure financing a year. In order to source capital for infrastructure financing, it proposes to set up a Credit Guarantee Enhancement Corporation.
As part of the infrastructure development programme, 1,25,000 km of rural roads will be laid under the Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana at a cost of Rs 80,250 crore and a national highways grid will be created.
The government has given a massive push to all forms of physical connectivity through Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana, industrial corridors, dedicated freight corridors, Bhartamala and Sagarmala projects, Jal Marg Vikas and UDAN Schemes. While the industrial corridors would improve infrastructure availability for greater industrial investment in the catchment regions, the dedicated freight corridors would mitigate the congestion of railway network benefitting the common man, finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman said.
Budget finds that the country needs to develop waterways to shift a significant portion of inland cargo movement from road and rail. This government envisions using the rivers for cargo transportation, which will also help to decongest roads and railways, she added.
As part of the Jal Marg Vikas Project for enhancing the navigational capacity of Ganga, a multi-modal terminal at Varanasi has become functional in November 2018 and two more terminals at Sahibganj and Haldia would be completed in 2019-20, Sitharaman said.
“The movement of cargo volume on Ganga is estimated to increase by nearly four times in the next four years. This will make movement of freight, passenger cheaper and reduce our import bill,” Ms Sitharaman said.
The Budget estimated railway infrastructure would need an investment of Rs 50 lakh crore between 2018-2030. The minister also said that large public infrastructure can be built on land parcels held by central ministries and central public sector enterprises across the country. As the world’s third largest domestic aviation market, the time was ripe for India to enter into aircraft financing and leasing activities from Indian shores.
The finance minister said India’s first indigenously developed payment ecosystem for transport, based on National Common Mobility Card (NCMC) standards, launched by the Prime Minister in March, 2019 will enable people to pay multiple kinds of transport charges, including metro services and toll tax, across the country. In order to finance the projects, India has had a reasonable success in brownfield asset monetization and aditionally, NHAI carried out one ToT (toll operate transfer) transaction garnering Rs 24,000 crore.
