Country Needs To Lift Up Infrastructure Spending To 10% Of GDP

Country Needs To Lift Up Infrastructure Spending To 10% Of GDPThe country requites to lift up infrastructure spending to about 10% of gross domestic product to attain and maintain economic development objective of 9% in the coming years.

In a presentation at the annual meeting of Asian Development Bank, IDFC Projects Ltd Managing Director Pradeep Singh stated, "In order to sustain growth targets, this (investment in infrastructure) would need to increase further to over 10 per cent of GDP by 2017."

The country's infrastructure expenditure is 8% of the Gross Domestic product, as compared to China's 9%.

At the end of March last year, India's gross domestic product remained at $1.4 trillion.

Noticing that the country has a lengthy way to go in terms of meeting up its infrastructure needs, Mr. Singh stated that the 12th Five Year Plan (2012-17) predicts $1 trillion investment in the segment.

Of the overall directed investment, private segment is likely to make an investment of $500 billion - with about $350 billion via debt and $150 billion of equity by 2017.

Mr. Singh stated that domestic funding sources will not be enough to meet up these requirements.

The overall investments in the last five years stood at $425 billion.

In spite of the aggressive growth in past five years, the country's basic infrastructure placed 86th in Global Competitive Report-2010 by World Economic Forum.