Rs 55,000 crore for metro rail, road and expressway in Uttar Pradesh

The Uttar Pradesh (UP) government has earmarked Rs 55,000 crore for investments in roads, expressways, and metro rail projects in the fiscal year (FY) 2023-24.

The slew of infrastructure projects to bolster basic as well as modern transport infrastructure in urban and rural pockets covers all the districts of the state.

This is in line with UP’s goal of creating jobs and attaining the $1-trillion economy target by 2027. According to UP Annual Budget 2023-24, the Yogi Adityanath government has envisaged an investment of over Rs 30,000 crore on the construction and maintenance of roads and bridges.

The state plans to leverage its network of roads, expressways, airports, dry ports, logistics hubs, and industrial corridors for ushering in development.

Rs 1,000 crore would be spent on the development of roads linked to religious and spiritual tourism, while Rs 50 crore would be marked on road projects related to industrial and logistics parks.

Meanwhile, budgetary provisions of Rs 585 crore and Rs 465 crore have been made for the Kanpur and Agra metro rail projects, respectively. Over Rs 1,300 crore has been allocated for the Delhi-Ghaziabad-Meerut Corridor Regional Rapid Transit System project in the coming financial year.

A provision of Rs 235 crore has been made in the state Budget for the initial phase of new expressway projects: Jhansi Link Expressway and Chitrakoot Link Expressway. The state will invest Rs 3,000 crore for the development of new cities and urban centres in 2023-24 as well.

“The state has started the process of acquiring land for the proposed expressway projects in UP,” chief minister Yogi Adityanath said after the Budget was tabled in the state legislature.

The Budget size of Rs 6.90 trillion was 6.5 per cent higher compared to Rs 6.48 trillion for the current financial year 2022-23.

In the recently held UP Global Investors Summit (GIS) 2023, UP garnered investment proposals of Rs 33.50 trillion from 19,000 domestic and foreign investors, and business groups across sectors, including roads.

UP is a vital cog to achieve the ambitious goal of India becoming a $5 trillion economy and the UP Budget 2023-24 will lay the foundation to foster the state’s contribution towards this, the CM had underlined.