(Video) Rajya Sabha TV (RSTV) The Big Picture: Strengthening India's Infrastructure

Topic: Strengthening India's Infrastructure

Guest:

A.K. Bhattacharya, (Editorial Director, Business Standard)
Bhanuchandar Nagarjan, (Former Consultant, The World Bank, Washington DC)
K.T. Ravindran, (Head of Urban Design, School of Planning and Architecture)

Topic Description:

In line with its election promise of Rs 100 trillion investment in the infrastructure sector by 2024, the NDA government would be targeting low-hanging fruits, such as Metro projects, inland waterways, natural gas grids and airport privatisation, to give a fillip to private sector investment in the first few months of its tenure. Getting private sector back in a big way would be the topmost priority since the government has a limited fiscal headroom. Fitch said in a May 24 report that reducing general government debt to 60 per cent of the GDP ceiling by FY25, from the rating agency’s 68.8 per cent of the GDP in FY19 would require a significant deficit reduction of about 0.5 per cent of GDP annually. The government’s own budgetary support would, therefore, be largely limited to creating infrastructure support for agriculture, IT in education and digital networks for its social outreach programmes. The road sector, however, would have to continue to depend on borrowings and budgetary resources, like the railways. The last five years have seen massive spending in roads, railways, water, irrigation and urban infrastructure. On this edition of the big picture we will analyse the new government’s thrust on Infrastructure.