India seeks help of MDBs to shape transition to developed nation

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For a country of more than 140 crore, leapfrogging from a developing nation to a developed nation status is stiffer than a Herculean task and New Delhi has approached multilateral development banks (MDBs) to extend their helping hand to help draw a roadmap for India to reach that position by 2047, the 100th year of Independence.

The momentous meeting took place between Union finance ministry functionaries and officials of multilateral lending institutions. The Economic Times has reported that the government urged the institutions to tap into their vast reservoir of project implementation experience to help put together a grand blueprint that should stretch beyond financing and planning to fashion the giant step for the most populous country on the planet.

In the words of the government, it should be a “budget-plus and finance-plus” strategy.

The ministry wants these multilateral development banks such as the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank to garner inputs/help from development finance institutions to formulate strategies to reduce time and cost overruns besides knowledge and technology transfers.

Incidentally, the Centre has taken the move in a climate when a growing number of investors, both public and private, from different parts of the globe are evincing interest to risk their money with the India growth story.

The Centre is already committing more budgetary allocations to infrastructure projects in order to trigger employment and economic growth.

According to the report, the officials of the development institutions who attended the March 7 meeting have assured of help in whatever ways they can.

While infrastructure development in an inalienable part of any country becoming a developed nation, in India their delay is also chronic. As of February this year, 764 of 1,902 infrastructure projects were suffering from various types of delays, a government report stated. Each of these projects cost more than Rs 150 crore.

The financial blow that these delays deliver is huge. The cumulative impact already went beyond Rs 4.92 lakh crore. Incidentally, their original price tag was Rs 32 lakh crore.

The Centre has raised its capital spending outlay 17% (over the revised estimate this year) for the next financial year to commit a record Rs 11.11 lakh crore.