New Delhi, Jan. 22. Economic Survey 2021-22 presented by FM Nirmala Sitaraman in Parliament today expects a GDP growth of 8-8.5 percent in the financial year (FY) 2023 (April 2022 to March 2023) against a growth of .9.2 percent in FY 2022.
The survey says economic activity in India has recovered to the pre-pandemic level currently. Analysing the performance of the economy in FY 2022, the survey said while the agricultural sector is estimated to have grown at 3.9 percent and industrial sector at 11.8 percent, the service sector is estimated to have grown 8.2 per cent The survey feels agricultural sector in the country has been least impacted by the Covid 19 pandemic.
While the government visualises that capital expenditure and exports will be drivers of India’s economic growth in the coming years, experts want to know how much promises of capex in the budget will translate to real investment and action on ground.
The economic survey continues India’s focus on infrastructure development, a trend shown by the union government in the recent years. According to the survey, to achieve the GDP of $5 trillion by 2024-25,India needs to spend about $1.4 trillion over these years on infrastructure. During FYs 2008-17, India invested about $1.1 trillion on infrastructure. However, the challenge is to step up infrastructure investment substantially.
Keeping this objective in view, National Infrastructure Pipeline (NIP) was launched with projected infrastructure investment of around Rs 111 lakh crore ($ 1.5 trillions) during FY 2020-2025 to provide world-class infrastructure across the country, It also aims to attract investment, both domestic and foreign in infrastructure. NIP was launched with 6,835 projects, has expanded to over 9,000 projects covering 34 infrastructure sub-sectors. During the fiscals 2020 to 2025, sectors such as energy (24 percent), roads (19 percent), urban (16 percent), and railways (13 percent) amount to around 70 percent of the projected capital expenditure in infrastructure in India.
