Finance Minister Smt.Nirmala Sitharaman chairs meeting to discuss infrastructure road map ahead

Union Minister for Finance & Corporate Affairs Smt. Nirmala Sitharaman today held a virtual meeting with senior government officials to discuss the infrastructure roadmap ahead. This was the fourth review meeting by the Finance Minister with Ministries/Departments and second in the series of meetings scheduled on the infrastructure roadmap ahead after the presentation of Budget 21-22. During the meeting, Capital Expenditure Plans of Ministries and their CPSEs, status of implementation of budget announcements and measures to expedite infrastructure investment were discussed. The meeting was attended by Finance Secretary, Secretary, Department of Economic Affairs, Secretary, Department of Public Enterprises, Secretary, M/o Power and Chairman, Railway Board & CEO as well as CMDs/CEOs of CPSEs of these two Ministries.

While reviewing the capital expenditure performance of the Ministries and their CPSEs, the Finance Minister emphasized that enhanced capex will play a critical role in revitalising the economy postpandemic and encouraged the Ministries to front-load their capital expenditure.Ministries were also requested to aim to achieve more than their capex targets.The Finance Minister said that the Budget for Financial Year 2021-22 provided a capital outlay of Rs.5.54 lakh crore, a sharp increase of 34.5% over the Budget Estimate of 2020-21. However, the efforts from the budgetary side to increase the capital expenditure have to be complemented by the Public Sector Enterprises, she added.

The Finance Minister also highlighted that the infrastructure expenditure is not just central government budgetary expenditure on infrastructure and includes infrastructures pending by state governments and the private sector.It also includes government expenditure through extra-budgetary resources. Therefore, Ministries are to actively work on getting projects funded through innovative structuring and financing and provide all support to private sector for enhancing infrastructure spending, the Finance Minister said, adding that the Ministriesalso need to explore PPP mode for viable projects. The finance minister also asked the Ministries and their CPSEs to ensure clearance of MSME’s dues at the earliest.

While concluding, the Finance Minister also requested the Secretaries of Ministries to push expenditure on large important projects to ensure that the achievement is commensurate with timelines. She also asked the Ministries to take up regular reviews of sector-specific projects with the concerned State Governments for effective implementation of the same. The Finance Minister said that she will continue to hold regular review meetings with all Ministries/Departments.