Economic Survey on Viksit Bharat: ‘Need PPP in infrastructure, 8 percent growth’

The Economic Survey 2024-25 has said that multiple critical sectors need private investment as government funding alone cannot upgrade the required infrastructure to meet the goal of Viksit Bharat by 2047.

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“We need to ensure increasing private participation in infrastructure by improving their capacity to conceptualise projects and their confidence in risk and revenue-sharing mechanisms, contract management, conflict resolution and project closure,” the Survey, tabled by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, said.

It added that “the efforts of the Union Government would need to be supplemented with wholehearted acceptance of the need for public-private partnerships in infrastructure across the country. Equally important, the private sector must reciprocate, too.”

Private participation will accelerate many critical infrastructure sectors in many ways—programme and project planning, financing, construction, maintenance, monetisation and impact assessment, it suggested.

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India needs a growth rate of 8% at constant prices on average for a decade or two in order to realise its economic aspirations of becoming Viksit Bharat, the Survey said.

For this, multi-modal transport and modernisation of existing physical assets will improve efficiency and last-mile connectivity, it suggested.

Disaster resilient urbanisation, public transport, preservation and upkeep of heritage sites, monuments and tourist destinations, as well as rural public infrastructure, including connectivity, call for greater attention, according to the survey.

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“Our infrastructure programme supports a variety of PPP models like build operate-transfer (toll and annuity), design-build-finance-operate-transfer, hybrid annuity model and toll-operate-transfer,” it added.

The survey also stated that an RBI’s report on private investments showed that investment intentions increased to ₹2.45 lakh crore for the financial year 2024-25, as compared to ₹1.6 lakh crore in 2023-24.