Considering the dimensions of the infrastructure deficit in the country, the Economic Survey on Thursday called for channelising savings for development of core sectors on a large scale.
The pre-Budget document on health of the economy stated that telecom, power, coal, ports, civil aviation and roads have shown signs of recovery in 2009-10.
"However, reaching the target of an infrastructural investment of 9 per cent of the GDP fixed by the 11th Five-Year Plan (2007-12) would be extremely challenging task," it said.
"Efforts are required to channelise the long-term contractual savings to infrastructure sectors on a much larger scale," it said.
The Planning Commission has estimated that investment in infrastructure as a proportion of GDP rose to 6 per cent in 2007-08 compared to 4.5 per cent in 2003-04.
It also brought attention towards removing administrative hurdles, including disputes in land acquisition, rehabilitation, contractual issues, shortage of raw material, environmental disputes and inadequate availability of skilled manpower for speedy implementation of projects.
As many as 254 projects were awaiting environment clearance whereas the terms of reference were not been decided for 270 projects during April to November 2009 period.
Infrastructure services that were affected by the slowdown in general economic activity during the previous year (2008-09), have gradually revived in the current fiscal with easing of supply bottlenecks in certain sectors and with demand recovery in others, it said.
It pointed out that raising capacity creation in some critical infrastructure sectors to the desired level is a major challenge.
The Survey also stressed for multifaceted initiative to promote flow of domestic and global resources to infrastructure.
About removing the bottleneck in the realisation of infrastructure projects, the Survey emphasised on expediting, synergising and consolidating the efforts to sufficiently and promptly meet the demand of increasing population and urban migration and faster economic growth.
The collapse of markets worldwide and the dampening of equity markets acted as decelerators on the mobilisation of resources by the infrastructure sectors during the previous year.
