Today, Hon'ble Prime Minister Narendra Modi in his address to the nation from the Red Fort, Delhi on the occasion of India’s 74th Independence Day talked about the National Infrastructure Pipeline Project. This article will give an insight on the key takeaways from the Report of the Task Force of the much talked about Project:
India will be spending about INR 111 Lakh Crore on the National Infrastructure Pipeline Project.
The Government has identified 7000 projects under the National Infrastructure Pipeline Project divided into 12 sectors viz. Energy, Roads, Railways, Ports, Airports, Urban, Digital Infrastructure, Irrigation, Rural Infrastructure, Agriculture & food processing infrastructure, Social Infrastructure, Industrial Infrastructure.
The vision of the Project is to provide Infrastructure services that raise the quality of life and ease of living in India to global standards.
The Infrastructure Vision of the Government for 2025 under this Project will be to provide:
Affordable and clear energy
Convenient & efficient transportation and logistics
Housing and Water supply for all
Digital services access for all
Quality education
Doubling farmer’s income
Good health & well being
Sustainable and smart cities
The strategies that the Government proposes to follow to achieve its Infrastructure Vision 2025
Provide a positive and enabling environment for significant private investment in infrastructure at all three levels of government
Design, deliver and maintain public infrastructure projects to meet efficiency, equity and inclusiveness goals
Design, construct and maintain public infrastructure to meet disaster resilience goals
Create a fast-track institutional, regulatory and implementation framework for infrastructure
Benchmark infrastructure performance to global best practices and standards
Leverage technology to enhance service standards, efficiency and safety
A well-planned NIP will boost the economy as it will enable more infrastructure projects, power business, create jobs, improve ease of living, and provide equitable access to infrastructure for all, thereby making growth more inclusive.
NIP will help create additional fiscal space by improving revenue base of the Government as a well-developed infrastructure will enhance the level of economic activity.
It will benefit the developers as the NIP will help provide better prepared projects, reduce aggressive bids / failure in project delivery.
The NIP will help build investor confidence as identified projects will be better prepared, the infrastructure projects would be less likely to suffer from financial stress given that they would be monitored by competent authority, thereby ensuring better returns for the investors.
The Central Government, the State Government and the Private Sector shall have a 39%, 40% and 21% share in implementing the National Infrastructure Pipeline Project in India.
Out of the total NIP of INR 111 Lakh Crore, INR 44 Lakh Crore (40%) worth of projects are under implementation, INR 34 Lakh Crore (30%) worth of projects are at the Conceptualization stage, and INR 22 Lakh Crore (20%) worth of projects are under development, projects worth INR 11 Lakh Crore (10%) are still uncategorized and information regarding them will be available in next few months.
The NIP also proposed certain general reforms, viz. improving project preparation processes, enhancing execution capacity of private sector participants, robust enabling environment, institutionalization and efficiency of dispute resolution, improving capacity development of project execution agencies, strengthening infrastructure quality, and promoting competition; financial sector reforms, viz. revitalizing bond and credit markets, strengthening the municipal bond market in India, revitalizing asset monetization, enabling user charges to finance infrastructure, long term financing landscape, and performance monitoring and evaluation.
References:
Report of the Task Force National Infrastructure Pipeline, Department of Economic Affairs, Ministry of Finance, Government of India, 2020
N.C. Jain Advocate & Associates - Civil Attorneys