A Medium Term Note (MTN) programme to raise Rs 50 billion from the international markets has been established by the Kerala Infrastructure Investment Fund Board (KIIFB).

By fiscal year 2023, India will be looking at a whopping investment requirement of Rs 38.6 trillion in the infrastructure sector. Over a period of time, the government spending has completely overshadowed private sector investment which was 37 per cent in 2008, and a gradual downward curve between 2013 and 2017 was witnessed.

With the capacity of sizable scale available at bargain prices, the sector will see a lot of Mergers and Acquisition (M&A) activities as bigger players with deep pockets eventually closing in on financially weak but potentially viable smaller firms.

The infrastructure sector is highly responsible for propelling India's overall development. With intense focus, the government has initiated policies to ensure time-bound creation of world-class infrastructure in the country.

In June 2015, Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced his bold Smart Cities Mission, an investment of Rs 980 billion to develop 100 cities across the country into intelligent, sustainable and resident-friendly communities.

A smart city is not only about cutting-edge technology, gadgets guiding your lifestyle or using ICT (Information and Communications Technology) but also to string together a man-machine interaction that will drive our socio-economic engagement in the society.

In another ten years, India is expected to have the second largest number of project management jobs in the world after China. Phenomenal growth in project management opportunities will largely be driven by economic expansion and infrastructure projects.

With an estimated average spend of upwards of Rs 1 trillion per annum (excluding land cost), the order book additions will remain healthy for both, large and mid-sized road contractors over the next four to five years.

India is investing heavily to scale up the current legacy systems to the new generation technologies, whether it is digitalisation initiatives, TCAS or ETCS or the CBTC-based technologies.