India to spend $500 bn on infra by 2030

New Delhi: India is likely to spend around $513 billion on infrastructure by the year 2030 to accommodate its growing population, according to a report by Mace.

A report titled 'INSIGHTS 2020: Blueprint for Modern Infrastructure Delivery' said that other large countries will also incur equally large infrastructure spends.

"By 2030, India will be spending $500 billion a year to accommodate its rapidly expanding population, the USA will be spending $665 billion to maintain its status as a global super power, and Peru will be spending $28bn a year to make it more resilient to natural disasters like El Nino," it said.

During a survey conducted by Mace to find the reasons for impact on projects and programmes across the globe, it found that lack of clarity of outcome when deciding on which schemes to take forward as a major issue. Often decisions are driven by political pressure rather than rigorous cost and benefit analysis, the report said.

"The poor predictive abilities of project teams in their early stages, who are pressured into providing fixed point price estimates and programmes well before accurate predictions are possible or realistic," it said. Further, procurements based on 'cheapest price' rather than 'value' to fit within unrealistic initial budgets. On large and complex projects, 'cheapest price' procurement is a false economy, it added.

Jason Millett, CEO for Consultancy at Mace, was of the view that around the world, good infrastructure is vital for socioeconomic prosperity, both directly through investment and jobs, and indirectly through thing like improvements to transport connectivity and access to clean water.