Enhanced Capex To Play Crucial Role In Economic Revival: Finance Minister

While reviewing the capital expenditure performance of the key ministries and their central public sector enterprises or CPSEs today, Finance Minister Nirmala Sithraman emphasized that an enhanced capital expenditure or capex will play a crucial role in economic revival after the COVID-19 pandemic. The Finance Minister chaired a virtual meeting on June 4 with senior government officials and encouraged the ministries to front-load their capital expenditure and also to ensure the clearance of MSME dues. (Also Read: GST Council To Discuss Tax Rate On COVID Essentials, Compensation To States )

According to a statement released by the Ministry of Finance on Friday, June 4, Ms Sitharaman also asked the ministries to aim to achieve more than their capex targets. She said that the budget for the financial year 2021-22 provided a capital outlay of Rs.5.54 lakh crore. This is a sharp 34.5 per cent over the budget estimate of the previous fiscal 2020-21. 

This was the fourth review meeting by the finance minister with the ministries or departments and the second in the series of meetings scheduled on the infrastructure roadmap ahead of Budget 2021-22. Capital expenditure plans of ministries and their CPSEs, the status of the implementation of budget announcements, and various measures to expedite infrastructure investment were discussed.

Ms Sitharaman highlighted that the infrastructure expenditure is not just central government budgetary expenditure on infrastructure and includes infrastructures pending by state governments and the private sector. She added that it also includes the government expenditure through the extra-budgetary resources.

Ministries have to work actively on getting projects funded through structuring and financing and provide support to the private sector for enhancing infrastructure spending, according to the Finance Minister. She directed that ministries also need to explore public-private partnership (PPP)) mode for viable projects.