With more than Rs 30,000 crore directed towards the sector and provisions for Rs 1 lakh crore of budgetary support in all, infrastructure development certainly seemed to be at the heart of the Union Budget presented by finance minister Pranab Mukherjee today. Despite an ever-widening fiscal deficit, Mukherjee massively upped the Budget allocation for several infrastructure schemes and sectors based on the rationale that infrastructure development generates income along with providing employment opportunities to a large section of people. “The investment in infrastructure for the growth of economy is critical. I have urged my colleagues in the Central and state governments to remove policy, regulatory and institutional bottlenecks for speedy implementation of infrastructure projects. I, on my part, will ensure that sufficient funds are made available for this sector,” Mukherjee said in his Budget speech.

One of the major programmes that received higher Budget allocation was the National Highways Development Programme (NHDP), in which budgetary support to National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) was increased by 23 per cent to Rs 8,578.45 crore over Rs 6,972.47 crore in 2008-09. The allocation for railways too was upped from Rs 10,800 crore in the Interim Budget, presented earlier this year, to Rs 15,800 crore for this fiscal.

The government’s flagship power development programme, Accelerated Power Development and Reform Programme (APDRP), also got a major boost with the finance minister proposing a 160 per cent increment over the budget estimate (BE) of 2008-09, taking the allocation for this scheme to Rs 2,080 crore this fiscal.

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