This year’s budget has some excellent announcements that will help in developing the infrastructure of the country. The government’s decision to focus on developing roads and highways would prove to be very beneficial for the growth of the logistics sector with the allotment of Rs 97,000 crore towards the sector.

We also welcome the decision of converting national highways and state highways into national highway roads. This would prove to be a great enabler in moving cargo in high traffic density corridors efficiently.   The proposed investment into railways, ports and inland waterways should help in the growth of multimodal logistics strengthening the country’s competitiveness.

Besides investment in infrastructure, the government should have also focused on the ‘soft’ logistics infrastructure to ensure smooth facilitation and transit of cargo like minimal paperwork through electronic data interface, seamless connectivity between multimodal   transport and ease of taxation.  Given the high growth in ecommerce and other consumption sectors, incentives to build world-class warehouses would have been far reaching.

Announcement of a uniform GST would have lead to pricing efficiency and enormous savings in terms of time and money for delivery of goods and services.