Noting that infrastructure creation is a top priority for the government, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Tuesday said the country’s railway infrastructure needs to be modernised. “There are areas we are doing better like highways, airport, port and power productivity and there are areas such as railways with existing infrastructure, where we need to modernise and hasten the pace of that improvement,” he said at the curtain raiser ceremony of the third annual meeting of Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank.

He also noted that in urban infrastructure, efforts are on to move beyond the traditional cities and go to other cities. “I can see a number of them (cities) where infrastructure has significantly improved,” he said. The Minister also said apart from “conventional infrastructure” the government is also making efforts to develop rural infrastructure and improve the quality of life of people residing there.

He also said the AIIB would play an important role in infrastructure development in the country. At the event, Jaitley also unveiled the logo and theme of the third annual meeting of AIIB, along with Jin Liqun, President of the Beijing-headquartered multilateral agency. The AIIB will hold its 2018 annual meeting in Mumbai on June 25 and 26.

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