Union Budget 2019: Priming the pump for investments, infrastructure

On the foreign investment front, ensuring a harmonised and hassle-free investment experience for foreign portfolio investors will help enable large cross-border capital flows

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman shone a bright light on the news for increased investments and sustained infrastructure spending. These are needed in order to create jobs, increase productivity and competitive advantage and get the vaunted “virtuous cycle” in motion. 

The announcement of the public sector bank recapitalisation target of Rs 70,000 crore is expected to kick start lending activities, a key requirement for private sector investments to accelerate. The decision that public infrastructure projects can now be built on land parcels held by central ministries and central public sector enterprises helps fill an important need and will enable productive asset recycling.