Allocations for states under the PM Gati Shakti - National Master Plan for Multi-modal Connectivity initiative, are likely to be doubled in this year's Union Budget 2023. Budget allocations for schemes may rise from Rs 5,000 crore to Rs 10,000 crore after requests from states to the Ministry of Finance, sources said.
The PM Gati Shakti will play a significant role in reducing the logistics cost, increasing efficiency and benefiting businesses, a top government official had said on Monday (January 23).
The Rs 5,000 crore already distributed to states to implement the initiative and develop infrastructure has already been fully utilised, officials said. Targets this year include the development of aggregation centres like warehouses and last-mile connectivity such as state transport services.
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On October 13 last year, Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched the Gati Shakti - National Master Plan aimed at developing an integrated infrastructure to reduce logistic costs.
Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman in 2022 had allotted Rs 20,000 crore as total outlay toward Gati Shakti in the Union Budget for the financial year 2022-23 for integrated planning and coordinated implementation of infrastructure connectivity projects.
The Finance Ministry had approved disbursement of over Rs 4,000 crore to states as a part of 'Scheme for Special Assistance to the States for Capital Investment for 2022-23' on January 2.
Secretary in the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT) Anurag Jain at the inaugural session of the B20 Inception Meeting said that the PM Gati Shakti initiative has over 1,600 data layers related to subjects such as land, forest, mines and existing infrastructure.
All logistics and connectivity infrastructure projects, entailing an investment of over Rs 500 crore, are routed through the NPG (network planning group), constituted under the PM Gati Shakti initiative.
The NPG has representations from various connectivity infrastructure ministries/departments involving their heads of network planning division for unified planning and integration of the proposals.
With agency inputs.
