Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman urged industry to step up investments and expand capacities, noting that worries about high public capital spending and borrowings crowding out private investments were misplaced.
“The emphasis on infra and public investments is done after a lot of stakeholder consultations… we have our own analysis that this is going to lead to crowding in of private investment,” she said, adding that this was an opportune time for greenfield and brownfield projects from corporates.
Emphasising that the Budget envisaged a two-track path, of building optimal infrastructure and encouraging sunrise sectors, for India’s growth in the Amrit Kaal, Ms. Sitharaman said that infrastructure development in the past had led to flawed outcomes.
“Infrastructure [has been] built in this country since 1947. But where did we fall short? We fell short because they were standing on their own, and after development, it was realised there is no connection with the raw material or links to ports so logistics and raw material costs became too much, and at the end of the day, you probably didn’t even have skilled workers around that area,” the Minister said at a post-Budget interaction with the PHD Chamber of Commerce and Industry. Such anomalies, she said, won’t exist under the PM Gati Shakti approach.