Union Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal on Thursday said that the PM Gati Shakti National Master Plan has the potential to save over Rs. 10 Lakh Crore annually by improving logistics efficiency.
He was addressing the National Workshop on PM Gati Shakti held to mark the first anniversary of the roll out of the National Master Plan, in New Delhi today.
The workshop focussed on the progress and achievements made by PM GatiShakti till date and the way forward.
Shri Goyal said that PM Gati Shakti is increasingly being used in the social sector for better infrastructure development, thereby, taking fruits of technology to every citizen of the country and improving ease of life for the common man.
The Minister said that PM Gati Shakti would define India’s future in the years to come.
Quoting the Prime Minister, Shri Narendra Modi, he said that PM Gati Shakti National Master Plan would lend both ‘Gati’ and ‘Shakti’ to India’s efforts in Infrastructure development.
The National Master Plan will transform the way we work and the outcomes of our work and will drive economic development, Shri Goyal said.
He observed that the entire nation has come together, transcending political differences to use PM GatiShakti to the best possible extent.
The Minister expressed confidence that PM Gati Shakti NMP would find a place in history as a powerful intervention that spurred rapid growth and development in the country. We look upon PM Gati Shakti as s service to the nation and society, he said.
Shri Goyal opined that the anniversary celebrations must be used as an opportunity to visualize and conceive plans for the future.
He asked all stakeholders to envision out of box ways to utilize PM GatiShakti for better, more economical and time bound infrastructure planning.
The Minister expressed confidence that PM Gati Shakti would help bring in balanced, inclusive, equitable development in the country by helping remote areas, especially those in the North East undertake integrated infrastructure planning and close development gaps.
The Minister referred to the Prime Minister’s Development Initiative for North East Region (PM-DevINE) scheme launched yesterday and said that by dovetailing PM Gati Shakti into the scheme would help utilize resources much more efficiently.
Shri Goyal said that the whole of the government was working in tandem to ensure the best possible use of PM Gati Shakti. He added that industry, business and social sector had welcomed PM Gati with open arms.
What is PM Gati Shakti?
Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched PM Gati Shakti on 13.10.21 for integrated planning of infrastructure and synchronized project implementation across all concerned Central Ministries, Departments and State Governments.
PM Gati Shakti is a transformative approach for integrated and holistic planning across concerned Ministries and Departments to improve multimodal connectivity, and logistics efficiency and address critical gaps for the seamless movement of people, and goods, with a focus on minimizing disruptions and ensuring timely completion of works.
It provides for an integrated platform, the National Master Plan, where all the economic zones and their multimodal connectivity infrastructure are depicted, along with physical linkages to promote a comprehensive and integrated multimodal national network of transportation and logistics to create efficiency gains and avenues for further developments, value addition and creating employment opportunities.
It may be noted that in the last 8 years, Capital Expenditure has seen over 4 times increase from 1.75 lac crores in 2014 to 7.5 lac crores in 2022.
The development of 7.582 kms new roads, 2500 kms of new petroleum & gas pipelines, 29,040 circuits kms, and 200 million tonnes of cargo being handled by India’s railway network have been constructed adopting PM GatiShakti’s approach.
Through the mechanism of PM National Master Plan 197 critical infrastructure gap projects have been identified and examined in sectors namely, the Ministry of Steel, Coal, Fertilizer as well as Food and Public Distribution under PM Gati Shakti to improve logistics efficiency.
Over 1300 inter-ministerial issues were resolved in the 11 months through the PMG Portal integrated with the National Master Plan.
Logistics Ease Across Different States (LEADS) 2022
The Minister also launched the Logistics Ease Across Different States (LEADS) 2022 survey report.
The LEADS is an indigenous data-driven index to assess logistics infrastructure, services, and human resources across all 36 States and UTs.
By engaging with various end-user stakeholders, the LEADS acts as a feedback mechanism on the existing logistic capacities and draws recommendations for further improvement.
The LEADS further uses the feedback evaluation to classify states on the scale of logistics ease currently present among them.
The LEADS 2022 has garnered more than 6500 responses from more than 2100 respondents across the country.
Unlike the previous versions of LEADS which were based on ranking systems for all states, LEADS 2022 has adopted a classification-based grading, states have been now classified under four categories viz coastal states, hinterland/landlocked states, north-eastern states, and Union Territories.
For the assessment of how well a State or UT has performed in comparison to the Top State/UT within the specific cluster.
Three performance categories namely, Achievers: States and UTs achieving 90% or more percentage, Fast Movers: States and UTs achieving percentage scores between 80% to 90%, and Aspirers: States and UTs achieving percentage scores below 80% have been made.
The LEADS 2022 survey report would assist PM Gati Shakti National Master Plan (PMGS-NMP) and National Logistics Policy (NLP) to perform a network mapping of logistics infrastructure, services, and regulatory environment enabling State Governments to identify and fill the gaps and achieve data-driven multimodal connectivity.
LEADS continues to act as a guiding & bridging mechanism for the identification of interventions enhancing logistics efficiency at State and UTs.