Nearly half of Narendra Modi's $1.4 trillion ‘new’ infrastructure promise may be already approved projects

The government has already promised to spend $109 billion on the Bharatmala project, a pan-India centrally-funded scheme for roads and highways, by 2022.

Over 1450 kilometres of metro rail projects are in different stages of progress, according to a Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs report released in March 2019. Citi estimates that each kilometre would cost about ₹5 billion, and therefore, the total project cost there would be about ₹7.3 trillion ($109 billion).

The Narendra Modi government unveiled a project to build 100 smart cities in India in 2015. In February 2018, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley told the Parliament that 99 cities have been selected and about ₹2.04 lakh crore ($32 billion) has already been allocated.

The Minister of Civil Aviation, Suresh Prabhu, said in September 2018 that the government would invest about $60 billion in new airports and modernising existing airports in the next ten years. According to the government, another $21 billion worth port development projects have been identified under the Sagarmala project, which aims to build 12 major and 200 non-major ports located along the country’s 7,500-kilometre coastline.

The Indian Railways spent about $130 billion in capital expenditure between 2015 and 2019. Citi estimates a 15% growth in the next five years based on the institution’s past track record, and that would be about $147 billion.