Push to Gatishakti: Centre firms up screening of public-funded projects

To ensure these have logistics & infrastructure connectivity, before it receives Cabinet nod

Government departments and ministries will have to screen all public-funded projects with a budgetary outlay of more than Rs 500 crore to ensure such projects have components of logistics and infrastructure connectivity, before it receives the nod from the Union Cabinet.

The finance ministry, in a recent directive seen by Business Standard, stated that all public-funded projects will have to be examined by an inter-ministerial body — Network Planning Group under PM GatiShakti — and see if all government departments have been coordinating and working in tandem with each other at the conceptualisation stage of a project.

The directive was sent by the finance ministry’s expenditure department to secretaries of all ministries, railway board and government’s policy think tank NITI Aayog at the end of last month and is in line with its focus on project implementation under the principles of PM GatiShakti.

Often, infrastructure projects run into delays because ministries work in silos or run into hurdles related to forest, mining or coastal regulation zone clearances after a project work begins. At times, government departments realise that an optical fibre cannot be laid at a particular stretch of an economic zone. Such events delay implementation of projects, particularly related to infrastructure.

Integration with government departments at the project’s conceptualisation stage will ensure that infrastructure projects are not delayed since the government will now be able to foresee the disruption before project implementation, a senior government official told Business Standard.

According to the directive, the Network Planning Group (NPG), consisting of heads of the network planning wing of respective infrastructure ministries, will have to examine a proposed project for ‘convergence’ and ‘integration’ at its feasibility study stage.

Thereafter, the recommendations of the NPG will have to be submitted to the public investment board, while ensuring that the project has been reflected on the PM GatiShakti online platform, the directive said.

Public investment board appraises every investment project worth more than Rs 500 crore before they are sent to the Cabinet for its approval.

“With the latest directive of the finance ministry, the impact of the Prime Minister’s GatiShakti initiative will be visible,” the official cited above said.

The directive comes in the backdrop of the approval of the PM GatiShakti masterplan in October last year. The masterplan is an integrated plan depicting the economic zones and the multimodal connectivity infrastructure, with an aim to integrate the interventions of various ministries and government departments. The larger idea is to address the missing gaps and ensure seamless movement of people.

The Cabinet had also approved a three-tier monitoring system towards the implementation of the GatiShakti masterplan. The NPG was set up to ensure reduction in logistics cost through micro-plan detailing, and recommend critical multimodal connectivity project proposals, which are not recommended by any line ministry.