Union Minister for Road Transport and Highways Shri Nitin Gadkari has emphasized the importance of well developed infrastructure for enhancing the level of economic activity, creating additional fiscal space by improving the revenue base of the government . Addressing the 29th Annual General Meeting of the American Chambers of Commerce in India on the theme ‘infrastructure propelling India in the global supply chain’ virtually he said that the bilateral trade between India and US has grown from 16 Billion US Dollars to 149 Billion US Dollars in the last 2 Decades and is projected to reach more than 500 Billion US Dollars by 2025. The Minister said the scope of technology transfer, innovation and research and development between India and the US must be further explored.
Shri Gadkari said infrastructure development plays an important role in fulfilling the vision of India in becoming 5 Trillion Dollar economy in the next 5 years. He said government is investing 1.4 Trillion Dollars in infrastructure development through National Infrastructure Pipeline and soon going to launch the national master plan of Prime Minister Gatishakti Scheme of more than 100 lakh crores Rupees for holistic and integrated infrastructure development in the country . He said The Gatishakti master plan will provide the framework for the NIP program and is aimed at making Indian products more competitive by cutting down the logistic costs improving the supply chains.
The Minister said India has about 6 million kms of the road network which is the 2nd largest road network in the world. The road infrastructure plays an important role in the Indian economy as 70% of the goods and nearly 90% of the passenger traffic uses the road network to commute. He said up keep and expansion of this network are critical not only from the supply chain perspective but also for the largest share of goods and passenger traffic that uses it.
Shri Gadkari said to catalyze a long term investment into infrastructure, the Government is in a process of setting up a new development finance institution DFR. The institution is being set up on a capital base of Rs 20,000 Crore and will have a lending target of Rs 5 Lakh crores in 3 years. He said government Is developing integrated inland waterways, air connectivity and road network at large.
The Minister said India is becoming the largest EV market for electronic 2-wheelers, 3-wheelers and cars. He said the US based companies can collaborate with our Research and Development towards EV battery technologies and retrofitting industry
Shri Gadkari said we are ready to adopt the world’s best technology without compromising quality, cost effectiveness and sustainability. He said he always use to say the American roads are not good because America is rich. But America is rich because American roads are good. He said our focus is on time bound, qualitative ,cost effective and sustainable world class infra development in this country.
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MJPS
