BT Budget Roundtable: Confident about achieving Rs 10 lakh cr capex target for FY24, says Finance Secretary

The government is confident about achieving its ambitious Rs 10 lakh crore capital expenditure target for the next financial year, T V Somanathan, Secretary of Finance, said at the Business Today Budget Roundtable 2023 on Monday.

In a conversation with Sidharth Zarabi, Managing Editor, Business Today Television, Somanathan said the Rs 7.5 lakh crore target that the government had set for itself for FY23 will be met at over 97 per cent.

“We are on course to spend Rs 7.3 lakh crore in the current financial year. The shortfall is due to some states not being able to utilise the funds initially planned for. There are some states that have not taken the money fully,” Somanathan told Business Today.

According to him, the states, however, have learnt from their experiences in FY23 and are now much better placed to utilise the funds faster.

Last year, the government of India (GoI) had raised the capital expenditure target significantly to Rs 7.5 lakh crore to boost infrastructure development that, it hoped, will increase economic activity and create employment.

In the union budget FY2023-24, tabled by the Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, the GoI has further increased the infrastructure capex by 33 per cent to Rs 10 lakh crore.

According to the finance secretary, Rs 1 lakh crore has been added to the railway capex in comparison to last year’s budget estimates. The FM announced a Rs 2.4 lakh crore capex target for the Indian Railways for FY2024. While, additional money has been planned for “retrofitting of some the refineries in the petroleum sector to make them of global standards”, said Somanathan.

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