India’s rapid economic growth over the last decade has placed tremendous stress on its limited infrastructure, bringing the shortage of infrastructure to the fore.
India’s rapid economic growth over the last decade has placed tremendous stress on its limited infrastructure, bringing the shortage of infrastructure to the fore. The approach paper to the Twelfth Five Year Plan envisages a growth of 9%-9.5% for the country in the years 2012-2017 admist a slowing global demand and an uncertain business environment especially in the Eurozone and the United States,two of India’s key trading partners. In such a cenario, the fulfillment of the country’s aggressive growth aspirations would depend on its ability to invigorate its domestic demand through investment, particularly in infrastructure projects and its ability to provide a congenial business environment for all concerned players. The country needs to urgently accelerate the conceptualization and implementation of all its infrastructure development to enable planned growth.
The significance of India’s infrastructure deficit has not been lost on the policy makers in the country, a realization that has seen the investment in infrastructure going up from 5.7% of the GDP in the base year of the eleventh plan to around 8% of the GDP in the last year of the plan. The pace of investment has been particularly buoyant in some sectors, notably telecommunications, oil & gas pipelines, while falling short of targets in electricity, railways, roads and ports. Efforts to attract private investment into infrastructure through the public-private partnerships (PPP) route have met with reasonable success, both at the Central and State government levels. A lot however still needs to be done to ensure that the need-gap is met.
