Author: Sunil Kumar Batra (senior journalist, nearly three decades in journalism and corporate sector)
Capex Data
- Capex raised 8.9% to ₹12.2 lakh crore (from ₹11.2 lakh crore in 2025-26)
- Effective capex: ₹17.1 lakh crore
- Capex rose from ₹2 lakh crore (2014-15) to ₹12.2 lakh crore (2026-27)
- Infrastructure multiplier: ₹2.5-3.5 GDP gain per rupee of government infra spend
Key Infrastructure Milestones
- National Highways grew 60% (91,287 → 1,46,572 km)
- Highway construction pace: 34 km/day (from 11.6 km/day in 2014)
- 68 Vande Bharat trains across 333 districts
- 45,000+ Rkm rail electrification
- Port capacity doubled to 2,762 MMTPA
- 88 airports under UDAN
- Inland waterways cargo up 710%
Major Programmes
- National Infrastructure Pipeline: 9,000-13,000 projects by 2025, valued at ₹185 lakh crore
- PM Gati Shakti NMP: 58 Central Ministries + 36 States/UTs; 1,700+ data layers; 293 projects worth ₹13.59 lakh crore
- 7 High-Speed Rail corridors: Mumbai-Pune, Pune-Hyderabad, Hyderabad-Bengaluru, Hyderabad-Chennai, Chennai-Bengaluru, Delhi-Varanasi, Varanasi-Siliguri
- 20 new National Waterways; new Dedicated Freight Corridor (Dankuni-Surat)
- City Economic Regions: ₹5,000 crore per CER over 5 years
- Infrastructure Risk Guarantee Fund proposed
- PPP investment as share of GDP: 0.1% (1991) → 14.29% (2012)
- India needs USD 1.723 trillion (₹143 trillion) infra investment FY24-FY30 (Morgan Stanley estimate)
UPSC Angle
- GS3: Infrastructure, economic development, budgetary provisions, PPP model