IEP Chandigarh
All India Congress Committee General Secretary and former Union Minister Kumari Selja said that the status of capital investment (capex) in the country is at the lowest level in 15 years. In the third quarter of 2023, between September and December, only 462 new projects received investment. Never in 15 years have there been so few projects in a quarter. Despite the number of projects being more than 35 thousand, only 361 projects could be completed.
In a statement issued to the media, Kumari Selja said that to prevent the real reality being known, the BJP central government manipulates the figures so that it can win applause on the basis of false marketing. But, the report of Center for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE) has exposed all this.
According to this report, there was no enthusiasm at any level regarding new investment in both government and private projects. The former Union Minister said that based on the number of projects announced by government and private sector promoters, projects worth Rs 10.2 lakh crore should have been completed by December 2023, but only projects worth Rs 1.26 crore could be completed.
That is, 88 percent of the projects missed the deadline in terms of amount. Whereas, the average valuation of projects completed every quarter for the last 10 years has been Rs 1.3 lakh crore. That is, this time due to slow pace, even lesser projects were completed than this average.
Kumari Selja said that the CMIE report shows that 85 percent of the announced projects are either in progress or awaiting clearance. The remaining 15 percent are projects which are stuck.
The trend of 16 years from 2007 till now shows that both in terms of number and amount, the number of such projects is continuously increasing, in which work is not being done even after being approved. The former Union Minister said that in the first two quarters of 2023-24, the stuck up projects was as many as 58-59 percent, which was only 36 percent in 2007 during Manmohan Singh’s Congress government.
A total investment of Rs 259.27 lakh crore has been received for different projects in the country, out of which work is going on only on projects worth Rs 151.78 lakh crore. The stuck projects include those worth Rs 32.64 lakh crore, the status of which is not even known. Therefore, instead of misleading the public with false figures, the BJP central government should release the white paper and tell the real reality.
