The integrated digital platform for infrastructure development—PM Gati Shakti—has the potential to reduce logistical costs from 13% to 8% in the next four-five years, which may lead to savings of about ₹20 lakh crore for an economy of $5 trillion, commerce and industry minister Piyush Goyal said on Thursday.
India, which aspires to become a $5 trillion economy by 2025, is adopting several innovative methods for ease of compliance and using new-age technology to reduce time and cost overrun. PM Gati Shakti is part of the same initiative, Goyal said a day after Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched the ‘holistic’ system to conceptualise, plan and execute infrastructure projects.
Goyal said the digital platform is a working system and it will categorise projects in terms of their timelines. Currently, the government has announced a ₹111 lakh crore National Infrastructure Pipeline (NIP) for the next four-five years and Gati Shakti will help 16 ministries in the integrated execution of these projects.
The minister said initially the idea to create a platform was primarily to reduce logistical costs, which is currently quite high at 13%. But gradually, the scope of it was extended. “Our aim is to bring it down from 13% to 8%,” Goyal said.
“The World Bank may have aborted its ease of doing business report, India has not done so. We will continue it… we will conduct it successfully,” he said.
“We will use this Gati Shakti in giving composite approvals to projects. Hence, it should not be seen in isolation. The PM has initiated several reforms (in processes) such as single-window system, Gati Shakti, project monitoring group… Intelligent planning will help in commissioning of projects within the stipulated timeframe and thus save thousands of crores (of rupees).”
Goyal said the portal is currently used exclusively by 16 central ministries, but after PM Modi launched it on Wednesday, many states have expressed interest to join this platform. “Several NDA (National Democratic Alliance)-ruled states have reached out to us to know more about the system,” he said. He said the platform will be opened for the private sector eventually so that they can also take benefit of integrated planning and execution of projects. Currently, PM Gati Shakti portal is not open to the public.
The portal is developed by Bhaskaracharya National Institute for Space Applications and Geo-informatics (BISAG-N), an Ahmedabad-based central government institute. “The work on this project (PM Gati Shakti) was started in August 2020 and the geospatial digital platform currently houses infra projects of 16 ministries with multi-thematic layers that will help the government in visualisation, planning, regulatory approvals, prioritisation, query, monitoring, gap identification, project management and decision making,” TP Singh, director general of BISAG-N said.
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