The Government enhanced spending on the infrastructure sector by as much as 8.6 per cent during 2014-15 even as it claimed to have ensured a seven-fold increase in road network.
Conceding that India’s infrastructure sector has been plagued by severe shortage of capacity across sectors, Finance Minister P Chidambaram who presented the Budget on Monday said that the Government will now spend Rs 181,134 crore as against Rs 166,756cr spent on the sector last year. In the interim budget, the Government also cut down the spending towards civil aviation marginally while allotting a 5 % hike to the Road Ministry to improve road infrastructure in the country as the Govt awarded less than 500 kilometres of road projects last year.
“In 2012-13 and in nine months of the current financial year, 3928 kilometres of National Highways, 39144 kms of Rural Roads, 3343 kms of new railway track and 217.5 milliion tonnes of capacity per annum in our ports have been created to give a big boost to infrastructure industries”, Chidambaram said in his speech. “The road network in the country has witnessed a whopping over seven-fold increase at 3.89 lakh kms in the UPA-I and UPA-II regime,” he said. Chidambaram pointed out that in the year 2004, the country’s highway network was 51,511 km which has now reached 3,89,578 km.
“We have added highways and rural roads under the PMGSY (Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana),” Chidambaram said. “According to the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways projects worth over Rs 1 lakh crore, which have been stuck for long, should start moving soon,” he said. Pitching for higher allocation for the infrastructure sectors, he said, there should be more funds for defence, railways, national highways and telecom.