Piyush Goyal, Union Minister for Commerce and Industry, Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution, and Textiles has stated that the PM GatiShakti National Master Plan has the potential to save more than Rs. 10 lakh crores annually by improving logistics efficiency. He was speaking on October 13, 2022, in New Delhi at the National Workshop on PM GatiShakti, which was held to commemorate the first anniversary of the implementation of the National Master Plan. The workshop focused on PM GatiShakti’s progress and achievements to date, as well as the way forward.
As per Goyal, PM GatiShakti is increasingly being used in the social sector for better infrastructure development, bringing the benefits of technology to every citizen of the country and improving the ease of life for the common man. As per Goyal, Prime Minister GatiShakti will define India’s future in the coming years. He quoted Prime Minister Narendra Modi as saying that the PM GatiShakti National Master Plan would lend both ‘Gati’ and ‘Shakti’ to India’s infrastructure development efforts.
According to Goyal, the National Master Plan will transform the way we work and the outcomes of our work, as well as drive economic development. He observed that the entire nation has come together, despite political differences, to make the best use of PM GatiShakti. The Minister expressed confidence that PM GatiShakti’s NMP would go down in history as a powerful intervention that fueled the country’s rapid growth and development. We regard PM GatiShakti as a service to the nation and society, he said.
Goyal believes that the anniversary celebrations should be used to visualise and plan for the future. He challenged all stakeholders to think outside the box in order to use PM GatiShakti for better, more cost-effective, and time-bound infrastructure planning.
The Minister expressed confidence that PM GatiShakti would contribute to the country’s balanced, inclusive, and equitable development by assisting remote areas, particularly those in the North East, in undertaking integrated infrastructure planning and closing development gaps.
The Minister mentioned the Prime Minister’s Development Initiative for the North East Region (PM-DevINE) scheme, which was launched yesterday, and stated that incorporating PM GatiShakti into the scheme would allow resources to be used much more efficiently. Goyal stated that the entire government was working together to make the best use of PM GatiShakti. He went on to say that industry, business, and the social sector had all welcomed PM Gati with open arms.
On October 13, 2021, Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched PM GatiShakti, a platform for integrated infrastructure planning and synchronized project implementation across all concerned Central Ministries, Departments, and State Governments.
PM GatiShakti is a transformative approach for integrated and holistic planning across concerned Ministries/Departments, with a focus on minimising disruptions and ensuring the timely completion of work.
It establishes an integrated platform, the National Master Plan, on which all economic zones and their multimodal connectivity infrastructure are depicted, as well as physical linkages, in order to promote a comprehensive and integrated multimodal national network of transportation and logistics in order to create efficiency gains and avenues for future development, value addition, and job creation.
It should be noted that capital expenditure has more than quadrupled in the last eight years, rising from 1.75 lakh crores in 2014 to 7.5 lakh crores in 2022. PM GatiShakti’s approach has resulted in the construction of 7.582 km of new roads, 2500 km of new petroleum and gas pipelines, 29,040 circuit km, and 200 million tonnes of cargo handled by India’s railway network.
To improve logistics efficiency, 197 critical infrastructure gap projects have been identified and examined through the PM National Master Plan mechanism in sectors such as the Ministry of Steel, Coal, Fertilizer, Food, and Public Distribution under PM GatiShakti. During the 11-month period, the PMG Portal integrated with the National Master Plan resolved over 1,300 inter-ministerial issues.
In addition, the Minister released the Logistics Ease Across Different States (LEADS) 2022 survey report. The LEADS is a data-driven index developed in-house to evaluate logistics infrastructure, services, and human resources across all 36 states and territories.
The LEADS acts as a feedback mechanism on existing logistic capacities, drawing recommendations for further improvement by engaging with various end-user stakeholders. The LEADS then uses the feedback evaluation to classify states based on the level of logistics ease that they currently have.
The LEADS 2022 survey received over 6,500 responses from over 2,100 people across the country. Unlike previous versions of LEADS, which used ranking systems for all states, LEADS 2022 uses classification-based grading, with states divided into four categories: coastal states, hinterland/landlocked states, northeastern states, and Union Territories. For determining how well a state or territory performed in comparison to the top state or territory within a given cluster.
The LEADS 2022 survey report would aid the PM GatiShakti National Master Plan (PMGS-NMP) and National Logistics Policy (NLP) in performing a network mapping of logistics infrastructure, services, and regulatory environment, allowing state governments to identify and fill gaps, achieving data-driven multimodal connectivity. LEADS continues to serve as a guiding and connecting mechanism for the identification of interventions that improve logistics efficiency at state and UT levels.
