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Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman has exhorted ministries to aim to achieve more than their capital expenditure (capex) targets for this fiscal (FY22), highlighting that enhanced spending will play a critical role in revitalising the economy post-COVID pandemic. She also urged the ministries and their Central Public Sector Enterprises (CPSEs) to ensure clearance of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSME) dues by July 31.

Sitharaman further urged the ministries to explore Public Private Partnership (PPP) mode for viable projects. While reviewing the capital expenditure performance of the ministries and their CPSEs, she emphasised that enhanced CAPEX will play a critical role in revitalising the economy post-pandemic and encouraged the ministries to front-load their capital expenditure. Union Budget for 2021-22 has provided a capital outlay of Rs 5.54 lakh crore, an increase of 34.5 percent over the Budget Estimate of 2020-21. However, she said the efforts from the budgetary side to increase the capital expenditure have to be complemented by the public sector enterprises.

The minister further said infrastructure expenditure is not just the central government budgetary expenditure on infrastructure but also includes infrastructure spending by state governments and private sector. It also includes government expenditure through extra-budgetary resources. Therefore, she said, ministries are to actively work on getting projects funded through innovative structuring and financing and provide all support to private sector for enhancing infrastructure spending.