Finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman directs PSUs to spend 50 per cent of Rs 1.24 crore capex by Sept 30

Finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Friday directed four infrastructure ministries to ensure that public sector enterprises under their administrative control must spend 50% of their combined capital expenditure (capex) outlay of Rs 1,24,821 crore for 2020-21 by September 30, an official statement said.

The seven central public sector enterprises (CPSEs) belonging to ministries of shipping, road transport and highways; housing and urban affairs; defence; and communications have spent Rs 24,933 crore in the first four months of current financial year (FY), which is little less than 20% of the planned outlay, it said.

“In FY 2019-20, against the capex target of Rs 1,29,821 crore for the 7 CPSEs, the achievement was Rs 1,14,730 crore i.e. 88.37%,” it said without naming the public sector companies. Sitharaman held a video conference on Friday with secretaries of the ministries of shipping, road transport and highways, housing and urban affairs, defence and department of telecommunications along with the chairman of the seven CPSEs to review the capital expenditure in the current financial year.

“This was 3rd in the ongoing series of meetings that the Finance Minister is having with various stakeholders to accelerate the economic growth in the background of Covid-19 pandemic,” it said.

While mentioning the significant role of CPSEs in giving a push to the growth of the Indian economy, the minister encouraged them to perform better to achieve their targets and to ensure that the capital outlay provided to them for the financial year 2020-21 is spent properly and within time.

She said that better performance of CPSEs can help the economy in a big way to recover from the impact of Covid-19, the statement said. The CPSEs also raised some constraints being faced by them especially due to Covid-19 pandemic, it added.

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