PM Gati Shakti: Economic ministries to submit list of infra gaps in a month

Labourers work at the construction site of a government stadium on the outskirts of Agartala, Tripura. Representative image (Reuters)

In an effort to accelerate PM Gati Shakti, an initiative to boost infrastructure connectivity, central economic ministries will submit in the next one month their recommendations on how to quickly and efficiently fill infra gaps, people with knowledge of the matter said.

This crucial feedback, to be sent a few days ahead of the national budget, is the next major step in the programme, enabling several infrastructure ministries such as Railways, Road Transport and Shipping to begin work on speeding up infrastructure projects and reducing logistics costs, the people said on condition of anonymity.

An Empowered Group of Secretaries (EGoS) decided at a meeting last week that economic ministries such as Finance, Commerce and Statistics would compile a list of infrastructural gaps. These will be forwarded to the infrastructure ministries and considered for inclusion in an action plan for the next financial year.

"However, an expedited timeline of 30 days has been agreed upon owing to the large amount of work left to do. There is also a significant push from the Prime Minister’s Office to complete the distributed work in a mission mode," a senior official at the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT), the nodal department for PM Gati Shakti, said.

Reducing logistic costs

Prime Minister Narendra Modi in October launched the initiative aimed at integrated and coordinated planning and implementation of infrastructure connectivity projects, and providing for seamless movement of people, goods and services from one means of transport to another.

The objective is to reduce the cost of logistics to ensure a more competitive manufacturing sector, better price realization for farmers and cheaper goods for consumers.

The EGoS is headed by the Cabinet Secretary and includes secretaries of 20 Infrastructure and Economic User Ministries to monitor implementation of PM Gati Shakti. People present at the last meeting said the decision to identify priority projects and prepare preliminary estimates for financial allocation has been left to economic ministries.

But to ensure that inter-ministerial spats don't break out, as has often been the case in the past, infrastructure line ministries have been left with the final decision on which projects will receive the most resources, a person said.

Streamlining government efforts

Officially classified as a National Master Plan for multi-modal connectivity of economic zones, PM Gati Shakti has been billed as the next step in cutting time-consuming approval processes and the multiplicity of regulatory clearances.

Since it incorporates the infrastructure schemes of both central ministries as well as state governments, the initiative has faced questions over its feasibility. But DPIIT officials say a new track of work has been devised this time.

"The scope of PM Gati Shakti is massive and touches almost all major central government-run schemes which have some infra component. This includes connectivity projects such as the plan to ring the country through high-speed highway corridors under Bharatmala and establishing a string of high-capacity ports around the entire coastal belt under Sagarmala," a senior official said on condition of anonymity.

Efforts to propel logistics projects such as under-construction inland waterways, dry or land ports, and airports under the UDAN regional connectivity scheme are also part of the initiative.

"As a result, instead of the earlier circular method of repeated inter-ministerial meetings, we have now decided to take up work on a project basis. The first set of recommendations would be followed immediately by a stocktaking exercise and initial planning," the senior official added.

Going forward

Economic zones like textile and pharmaceutical clusters, defence corridors, electronic parks, industrial corridors, fishing clusters and agri zones will also be covered to improve connectivity and make Indian businesses more competitive.

PM Gati Shakti also entails a digital platform that will bring 16 ministries including railways and roadways together for integrated planning and coordinated implementation of infrastructure connectivity projects. The portal will also map the need for roads across the country and pinpoint challenges in connectivity.

In the first six months, the government wants PM Gati Shakti to also address past issues through holistic planning for stakeholders in major infrastructure projects. To this end, it is set to leverage technology extensively.

Spatial planning tools with Indian Space Research Organisation imagery developed by BiSAG-N (Bhaskaracharya National Institute for Space Applications and Geoinformatics) have been kept at the core of the nationwide data mapping exercise.

This identifies logistics, connectivity, cost and functional bottlenecks on a national map.

At its last meeting, the EGoS was informed that over 300 layers of data had been mapped onto the GIS based national master plan. All central ministries and most state governments have started updating their required data layers. GIS is short for geographic information system.