Two-thirds of the infrastructure investment, as per the revised plan, was to be funded by the public sector (central and state governments) while the remaining one-third was to come from the private sector.

Over the past 10 years, India has successfully executed projects such as the Golden Quadrilateral road programme and port expansion projects in the country.

Renewable energy tariffs for both·solar and wind power·have touched grid parity from 2HFY17. The levelised tariffs dropped to Rs 2.44/kWh in solar energy and Rs 2.65/kWh in wind energy after the bidding in 1HFY18.

In what should have been a major story that was buried under other headlines, India achieved a significant milestone in its Digital India programme when 100,000-gram panchayats, or village councils, across the country were connected through a high-speed optical fibre network called BharatNet.

There is a silver lining here: For the past two years, the Modi government has been adopting a broad strategy to substantially improve India's dismal WB ranking for ease of doing business. Concerted efforts have been made to remove serious bottlenecks that exist in the numerous business laws and a "holistic approach"taken.

This Union Budget came against the backdrop of a raft of reforms, economic slowdown and fiscal stress. While the Budget proposals will incrementally contribute to economic expansion with its de facto elements of stimulus, the pace of growth will largely be due to factors outside the Budget.

Despite a raft of policy facilitations, domestic airlines are flying into two major headwinds – crippling infrastructure constraints at major airports, and an uptick in fuel prices – which could mean growth in domestic air passenger traffic may have peaked out for the medium term.

Until recently, we used to talk about the cost of funds being too high and, as you are aware, some infrastructure projects have a long gestation period. There is a period of construction and then there are cost overruns and delays.

Policy actions to revive stalled projects, expedite approvals, introduce hybrid annuity and toll-operate-transfer (TOT) models in highways, and sustain rapid growth in renewable capacity augur well for the infrastructure financing landscape.