Acting Finance Minister Piyush Goyal presented Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led government’s last budget ahead of the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. While presenting the budget Piyush Goyal said that India is fastest highways developer in the world; 27 km of highways are built each day.
While announcing the budget for the road transport sector, Piyush Goyal made some significant announcements, which we list for you
- With the focus on the highways, government is focusing on building rural roads and has allocated Rs 19000 crore for building rural roads for FY 2020 under PMGSY.
- Government will introduce container cargo movement to the NorthEast, by improving the navigation capacity of the Brahmaputra River.
- The flagship programme of Sagarmala along the coastal areas of the country will develop ports for faster handling of import and export cargo.
- Under the ‘UDAAN Scheme’, the number of operational airports has crossed 100 with the commissioning of the Pakyong airport in Sikkim. Domestic passenger traffic has also doubled which has led to large number of jobs opportunities.
- Projects stuck for decades like the Eastern Peripheral Highway around Delhi or the Bogibeel rail-cum-road bridge in Assam and Arunachal Pradesh have been completed.
With PTI inputs