Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Friday directed Secretaries of Ministries of Shipping, Road Transport and Highways, Housing and Urban Affairs, Defence and Department of Telecommunications to closely monitor the performance of CPSEs in order to ensure capital expenditure to the tune of 50 per cent of capital outlay by the end of September of the current fiscal and make appropriate plan for it.

This came at the third capex review meeting that the Finance Minister held through video conference with Secretaries of the various top Ministries along with the CMDs of seven CPSEs belonging to these Ministries, to review the capital expenditure in this financial year.

This was part of the ongoing series of meetings that the Finance Minister is having with various stakeholders to accelerate the economic growth in the background of the pandemic.

The combined capex target for FY 2020-21 for these seven CPSEs is ₹1,24,82 crore.

In FY 2019-20, against the capex target of ₹1,29,821 crore for the seven CPSEs, the achievement was ₹1,14,730 crore i.e. 88.37 per cent. During June quarter of FY 2019-20 achievement was ₹20,172 crore (15.53 per cent) and achievement up to July 2020 (FY 2020-21) is ₹24,933 crore (20 per cent)

While mentioning the significant role of CPSEs in giving a push to the growth of the Indian economy, Sitharaman encouraged them to perform better to achieve their targets and to ensure that the capital outlay provided to them for the financial year 2020-21 is spent properly and within time. She said that better performance of CPSEs can help the economy in a big way to recover from the impact of the pandemic.

The CPSEs discussed constraints being faced by them especially due to the pandemic. “Extraordinary situation requires extraordinary efforts and with collective efforts, we will not only perform better but also help the Indian economy to achieve better results,” an official release quoted her as saying.

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