Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Wednesday asked the Health Ministry and the Department of Water Resources, River Development & Ganga Rejuvenation to push infrastructure spending by effectively implementing all National Infrastructure Pipeline (NIP) projects in time. They were asked to ensure quick resolution of unresolved issues in coordination with State governments and other Ministries.

Reviewing the progress of the NIP implementation, Sitharaman said that NIP is a part of the Central government’s initiative to provide world-class infrastructure to its citizens and enhance the ease of living.

In the review meeting, in addition to infrastructure spending along with annual targeted and achieved expenditure by these two ministries/departments, various initiatives taken by them to expedite were also discussed. About 24 projects worth ₹80,915 crore under the Ministry of Health & Family Welfare and 10 large projects worth ₹2,79,604 crore under the Department of Water Resources, RD & GR, were reviewed in detail along with bottlenecks, if any, being faced in the project implementation.

Ministries/Departments were also asked to promote investible projects by holding discussions with prospective investors. Ministries were also asked to update the National Infrastructure Pipeline dashboard regularly to allow seamless online monitoring.

Agenda of the meeting

The agenda of the review meeting was to discuss the progress of NIP projects, expenditure incurred so far and the initiatives taken to expedite the project implementation. This was the second review meeting by the Finance Minister with various Ministries and Departments to monitor and accelerate NIP project implementation.

It was explained in the meeting that despite the pandemic, the NIP has managed to achieve substantial progress. The NIP was launched with 6,835 projects, which is now expanded to more than 7,300 projects. Many Ministries/departments have shown substantial progress in project implementation and expenditure, especially, in Q2 of FY21. In addition, majority of ministries/departments have targeted substantially high Infra-expenditure in FY21 than the actual expenditure of FY20, it was noted.

Published on January 6, 2021