Budget 2019: Government allocates Rs 7,300 crore under AMRUT

The government has set aside Rs 7,300 crore under the Atal Mission for Rejuvenation and Urban Transformation (AMRUT) scheme that is targeted at upgrading urban infrastructure across 500 towns and cities.

This is an increase of almost 14.06 percent over last year's allocation.

The AMRUT scheme was allocated Rs 6,400 crore (revised) in last year's Budget. The allocation under the scheme was cut to Rs 6000 crore in 2018-19 from Rs 9,000 crore in 2017-18.

AMRUT scheme is aimed at ensuring robust sewage networks, water supply and other civic amenities to improve the quality of life of people in urban areas.

As per statistics provided by the Housing and Urban Affairs ministry, as many as 4,097 projects worth Rs 54,816 crore have been awarded under the AMRUT scheme. As many as 1,035 projects worth Rs 2,388 crore have so far been completed under the scheme.

The AMRUT Mission also has a reform agenda spread over 11 reforms comprising 54 milestones to be achieved by the states and union territories over a period of four years.  For the year 2018-19, an amount of Rs 600 crore had been earmarked to incentivise the states/ UTs for implementing reforms out of which Rs 260 crore has been earmarked to incentivise the AMRUT cities for issuing municipal bonds, on first-come-first-serve basis.

An amount of Rs 340 crore has been disbursed to 21 states and union territories during the year 2018-19 for implementation of reforms. Further, Rs 119 crore has been awarded as incentive to five cities such as Pune, Hyderabad, Indore, Bhopal and Amravati for issuing the municipal bonds.

The World Bank had last year released the Doing Business Report (DBR) 2019 in which the country’s rank in Construction Permits indicator had gone up to 52 from 181, a year ago. This was made possible due to the reforms implemented by some municipalities in facilitating Ease of Doing Business in construction permits.

Further, Online Building Permission System (OBPS) has been implemented in 1,453 cities across the country including 436 Mission cities. Ten states namely Andhra Pradesh, Delhi, Gujarat, Himachal Pradesh, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Punjab, Telangana and Tripura have implemented OBPS in all the ULBs. This is being extended to all the cities/ towns across the country.