India needs to overhaul metrics used for measuring infrastructure utilisation: Eco Survey 2024

India needs to better track infrastructure utilisation rates for shedding light on sub-sectors where there is either an oversupply or a shortfall. To address these concerns, the Economic Survey 2023-24 has recommended creating an index that tracks this metric.

According to the survey, existing databases fall short on assessing the demand for infrastructure and tracking the utilisation of facilities. While statistics on the infrastructure sector can be derived from several available databases, aggregation of information - on both financial flows and physical progress - is difficult now.

"A roadmap and an action plan for systematic collection of information on infrastructure-oriented financial flows are essential," the Survey has recommended while adding that project-wise and sector-wise information on physical progress, now maintained in different formats and frequencies, need to be reexamined and revised to facilitate a complete picture.


Vinayak Chatterjee, Founder and Managing Trustee at the Infravision Foundation, “The key macroeconomic index for infrastructure development is Gross fixed capital formation in infrastructure (GCFI) represented as a percentage of Gross Domestic Product (GDP). India’s aspirational target is 8%.”
“However, the economic survey seems to allude to the fact that a statistical collection super- structure to agglomerate such data from central, state, village, panchayat, and Urban Local Bodies (ULB) level is still not in place,” he added.

In its commentary on the Indian economy, the survey said there is a need to improve data capture and reporting mechanisms for investments in infrastructure across instruments and sectors as well its composition across different projects on a granular level.

“The Rangarajan Commission Report on Infrastructure Statistics (2001) had underscored the importance of collecting and maintaining a reliable statistical database for the infrastructure sector. Major strides have been made since then to collect data on policy direction, institutional strength, project performance and monitoring. However, data gaps persist in some key areas,” the Survey highlighted.

Commenting on the need for better monitoring infrastructure spend as well, the survey pointed out that analysis of the capital expenditure of the State Governments is not possible. This is because the data on the Gross Budgetary Support (GBS) by the State Government to the State Public Sector Enterprises (SPSEs) and the resources mobilised by SPSEs themselves are not available in a consolidated form.