Sitharaman chairs review meeting of the National Infrastructure Pipeline

New Delhi: Union Minister for Finance & Corporate Affairs Nirmala Sitharaman in a meeting on Wednesday reviewed the progress of National Infrastructure Pipeline (NIP) implementation. Secretaries of the Department of Water Resources, River Development & Ganga Rejuvenation and Ministry of Health & Family Welfare were also present at the meeting. The agenda was to discuss the progress of NIP projects, expenditure incurred so far and the initiatives were taken to expedite the project implementation. This was the second review meeting by the Finance Minister with various ministries & departments to monitor and accelerate NIP project implementation.

It was explained in the meeting that despite the pandemic, the NIP has managed to achieve substantial progress. The NIP was launched with 6,835 projects, which is now expanded to more than 7,300 projects. Many ministries and departments have shown substantial progress in project implementation and expenditure, especially, in the second quarter of the current financial year. In addition, the majority of ministries and departments have targeted substantially high Infra-expenditure in FY 2020-21 than the actual expenditure of FY 20.

In the review meeting, in addition to infra spending along with annual targeted and achieved expenditure by these two ministries & departments, various initiatives taken by them to expedite were also discussed. 24 projects worth Rs 80,915 crore under the Ministry of Health & Family Welfare and 10 large projects worth Rs 2,79,604 crore under the Department of Water Resources, RD & GR were reviewed in detail along with bottlenecks, if any, being faced in the project implementation.

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While reviewing the progress, Nirmala Sitharaman said that NIP is a part of the government of India's initiative to provide world-class infrastructure to its citizens and enhance the ease of living. The Finance Minister asked the two ministries and departments to push the infra-expenditure by effectively implement all NIP projects in time and to ensure quick resolution of unresolved issues in coordination with state governments and other ministries. Ministries & departments were also asked to promote investible projects by holding discussions with prospective investors. Ministries were also asked to update the National Infrastructure Pipeline dashboard regularly to allow seamless online monitoring.

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