Union Finance Minister chairs review meeting of National Infrastructure Pipeline

Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman in a meeting with Secretaries of the Department of Water Resources, River Development & Ganga Rejuvenation and Ministry of Health & Family Welfare on Wednesday reviewed the progress of National Infrastructure Pipeline (NIP) implementation.

Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman in a meeting with Secretaries of the Department of Water Resources, River Development and Ganga Rejuvenation and Ministry of Health & Family Welfare on Wednesday reviewed the progress of the National Infrastructure Pipeline (NIP) implementation.

The Ministry of Finance said in a release that the agenda of the meeting was to discuss the progress of NIP projects, expenditure incurred so far and the initiatives were taken to expedite the project implementation. This was the second review meeting by the Finance Minister with various Ministries & Departments to monitor and accelerate NIP project implementation, the release said.

It was explained in the meeting that despite the pandemic, the NIP has managed to achieve substantial progress, the ministry said.

"The NIP was launched with 6,835 projects, which is now expanded to more than 7,300 projects. Many Ministries/departments have shown substantial progress in project implementation and expenditure, especially, in Q2 of FY21. In addition, the majority of ministries/departments have targeted substantially high Infra-expenditure in FY21 than the actual expenditure of FY 20," the release said.

In the review meeting, in addition to infra spending along with annual targeted and achieved expenditure by these two ministries/departments, various initiatives taken by them to expedite were also discussed.

"24 projects worth Rs 80,915 crore under the Ministry of Health & Family Welfare and 10 large projects worth Rs 2,79,604 crore under the Department of Water Resources, RD & GR were reviewed in detail along with bottlenecks, if any, being faced in the project implementation," the further release said.

While reviewing the progress, Nirmala Sitharaman said that NIP is a part of the Government of India's initiative to provide world-class infrastructure to its citizens and enhance the ease of living.

The Finance Minister asked the two ministries/departments to push the infra-expenditure by effectively implement all NIP projects in time and to ensure quick resolution of unresolved issues in coordination with State Governments and other Ministries.

The Ministries/Departments were also asked to promote investible projects by holding discussions with prospective investors. Moreover, the Ministries were also asked to update the National Infrastructure Pipeline dashboard regularly to allow seamless online monitoring.

( With inputs from ANI )