Recasting National Infrastructure Pipeline (NIP): The NIP, originally envisaged for six years, requires a mid-term assessment to identify deficient investment in respect of sectors, timelines and participants (Central and State governments and the private sector). It is time to recast the NIP so as to make up for the identified deficiencies and reassess sectoral priorities and the timelines. Continued infrastructure expansion is critical to strengthen the ongoing growth momentum and help achieve our potential growth of 7 per cent plus.

Comprehensive Covid strategy: So far, Covid-related policies adopted by the government have been reactive in nature. Given the evolving Covid strains, it would be best to develop a comprehensive strategy for neutralising Covid’s deleterious economic impact and minimising its adverse health impact. For this, augmented investment is needed for increasing vaccine production capacity and also vaccine R&D. In this endeavour, both the public and the private sectors should participate.

Urbanising employment guarantee scheme: While the rural employment scheme has served a critical role for India’s rural population, it is time to develop a suitable urban counterpart of this scheme. This would require developing a registration process for the urban unemployed, a mechanism for updating this database, and linking this scheme to developing urban infrastructure throughout India. This will not only generate income and employment in the urban areas but also cater to significant deficiencies in city infrastructure which may be identified at the local level.

Monetising government and public sector land assets: While a National Monetisation Pipeline (NMP) has been specified, it does not cover monetisation of land assets owned by government, including defence and non-defence sectors as well as the public sector. These assets can be suitably monetised, and the preferred mode of monetisation can be leasing of such land at commercial rates throughout India.

Recalibrating fiscal consolidation path: The fiscal consolidation path as specified in the 2018 amendment of the Centre’s FRBMA has been missed by a significant margin especially due to the onset of Covid. This has resulted in a sharp increase in the general government debt-GDP ratio which is estimated to be nearly 88 per cent by end-March 2022.

A return to fiscal consolidation should be signalled in the Centre’s FY23 Budget, but the path of fiscal consolidation should be carefully calibrated so as not to put any breaks on the ongoing growth momentum.

The author is the Chief Policy Advisor with EY

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