Nirmala Sitharaman, the Union Finance Minister, will announce the Budget 2024 on February 1; the Parliamentary Budget Session is scheduled to begin on January 31. Infrastructure boost is expected to be one of the major focuses of the forthcoming Budget, and based on an exclusive interview with Anil Bansal the Senior Director, Urban Reforms & Infrastructure, IPE Global, the spokesperson said India has been witnessing renewed emphasis on urban development over the last few years, especially after the roll-out of several centrally sponsored schemes such as PMAY-Urban, Metro Rail & RRTS, Smart Cities Mission, Swachh Bharat Mission, AMRUT Mission, DAY-NULM, etc. He said we expect Budget 2024 to take this momentum forward and create the base for achieving major transformations by 2030.
These are the key expectations for the infrastructure sector as expressed by Anil Bansal.
up to last year, central allocations to the sector have been heavily tilted towards urban housing and metro rail, with relatively low shares for other urban services such as water supply, sanitation, solid waste management, etc. With the initiation of AMRUT 2.0 and SBM 2.0 in 2021, we are looking at higher allocations for these sub-sectors this time around.
I would do well to allocate special budgets for climate mitigation and adaptation efforts, for building climate-smart and climate-sensitive cities. Learnings from the ongoing SCM mission need to be absorbed and available digital and maturing technologies such as AI need to be leveraged further to deliver transformational improvements in urban services. This should be the focus of the next iteration of Smart Cities Mission, which is eagerly awaited by the industry.
Delays in land acquisitions and slow execution of works are key challenges resulting in cost overruns, extra budgetary resource requirements, and chronic slippages on urban projects and missions. This highlights the need to lay stronger emphasis on capacity building of project executing and implementing agencies, especially urban local bodies, and streamlining processes for land acquisition/permitting and project life-cycle management.
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