From: lessgovt@gmail.com   
      
   India Spends Big on What It Needs Most to Catch Up to China   
   By Jason Douglas and Vibhuti Agarwal, Sept. 11, 2023, WSJ   
   MUMBAI—The financial capital of India has become a colossal construction   
   site. The barriers that try to keep daily life on track in the metropolis on   
   the country’s west coast proclaim: “Mumbai is upgrading.”   
      
   A new road being built along the Arabian Sea is aimed at easing congestion in   
   a city where three-lane roads are frequently occupied by five lanes of honking   
   traffic. A rapid-transit metro system is being extended to ease pressure on   
   suburban trains    
   overflowing with people. A rail freight corridor stretching all the way to New   
   Delhi is expected to cut the time it takes to ship goods along the 870 miles   
   to 14 hours—from 14 days.   
      
   The construction in Mumbai reflects a national push in India to transform a   
   country where economic growth has long been snarled by crumbling and   
   inefficient infrastructure. In recent years, the government has poured money   
   onto the problem, an effort that    
   has only accelerated as Western governments and multinationals have grown   
   uneasy over relying on China for manufactured goods.   
      
   Some signs suggest the changes are bearing fruit. The enormous outlays are   
   helping to power India’s economy, with the International Monetary Fund   
   saying capital spending and productivity growth will be the biggest drivers of   
   India’s expansion in the    
   years ahead. Foreign investment, from companies including Apple and Taiwanese   
   electronics giant Foxconn, has more than doubled in the past 10 years, to   
   around $50 billion in 2022.   
      
   Economists say India remains a long way from having the kind of infrastructure   
   it needs to foster a higher-income economy. A deadly train crash in June   
   highlighted the need for further improvements in railway maintenance and   
   safety. The country    
   especially lags behind China, which has spent decades investing enormous sums   
   in infrastructure that undergirds its status as the world’s factory floor.   
      
   “Is India’s infrastructure tangibly better? The answer is yes. Is it good   
   enough for the kind of aspirations India has? Then the answer is no. It is   
   still a work in progress,” said Arup Raha, head of Asia economics at Oxford   
   Economics.   
      
   India has budgeted more than 10 trillion rupees, or about $120 billion, for   
   capital expenditure in the fiscal year ending March 2024, according to   
   India’s Finance Ministry. That is 37% higher than the previous fiscal year,   
   and more than twice the    
   amount spent in 2019.   
      
   In all, India’s government has published a pipeline of infrastructure   
   projects covering the years 2019 through 2025 totaling just shy of $2   
   trillion. Most of the funding is expected to come from central and state   
   governments, though the government is    
   hoping the private sector will finance about 22% of that sum, according to   
   Invest India, the country’s investment promotion agency. Sectors include   
   roads, railways, urban development and housing, energy and irrigation.   
      
   The scale of construction in recent years has been staggering. India had about   
   90,000 miles of national highways at the close of the fiscal year in March,   
   according to the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways, almost double the   
   more than 49,000 miles    
   it had a decade earlier. Hundreds of miles of new roads are being added every   
   month.   
      
   India now has more miles of electrified railway than the U.K. or France,   
   according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.   
   Ambitious megaprojects in the works include a string of new or refurbished   
   ports garlanding India’s    
   coastline. Bridges and tunnels are connecting remote provinces and   
   solar-energy parks are sprouting to power homes and factories. Mass transit   
   systems are popping up in dozens of cities. New railway lines are linking   
   major cities with high-speed trains.   
      
   “We are extremely sensitive to how well supply chains work,” said Zarir N.   
   Langrana, executive director of Tata Chemicals, a global chemicals business   
   and unit of India’s giant Tata Group conglomerate.   
      
   The improvements in infrastructure aren’t confined to smoother roads,   
   Langrana said. They also include better facilities for storage as well as   
   digital infrastructure that allows trucks to speed through checkpoints at   
   state lines, where previously they    
   would have faced paperwork checks and cargo inspections.    
      
   Though he said India’s smaller ports need improvement, the overall result is   
   an economy better equipped to handle growing volumes of international trade.    
      
   “I don’t think the infrastructure of seven or five or three years ago   
   could have handled it,” Langrana said.   
      
   Wes Burgess, chief product officer of Cocona, a U.S. firm that makes   
   temperature-regulating materials used in apparel and bedding, first visited   
   India in 2020 to scope out investment opportunities as part of the Boulder,   
   Colo., company’s effort to    
   diversify its supply chain away from China.    
      
   The company found manufacturing partners throughout India and big customers in   
   Delhi and Bengaluru, and sees big opportunities in India’s huge consumer   
   market to sell its products as well as reduce its exposure to China.    
      
   He has been back a few times since that first visit and said that each time he   
   is struck by how much construction activity is happening. “Everywhere there   
   is new infrastructure being built,” he said. An express train he’s taken   
   from Mumbai to    
   Ahmedabad “just flies,” he said, and he said India now has some of the   
   best airports he’s visited worldwide.   
      
   Still, India is climbing out of a giant pothole. The geyser of spending   
   follows decades of underinvestment. Ancient railways, shoddy roads and spotty   
   electricity meant India was for years left on the sidelines of global supply   
   chains that require hyper-   
   efficient logistics networks to assemble products and ship them to far-flung   
   markets.   
      
   Average monthly electricity generation in the 12 months through August was up   
   42% compared with a decade earlier, according to official statistics, but at   
   times demand can still outstrip supply. A dry August, for instance, meant   
   India burned more coal    
   than forecast as the grid strained to meet a surge in demand to power   
   irrigation systems.    
      
   The upswing in construction is also the result of a sea change in how projects   
   are developed, financed and delivered, say economists, infrastructure   
   specialists and corporate executives.   
      
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)