The PM Gati Shakti - National Master Plan (NMP) has completed a review of 76 major central government infrastructure projects related to railways, roads and transport, etc. worth Rs 5.14 lakh crore in the past year, leading to cost savings, providing the shortest connectivity and minimising forest cover intersections.

PM Gati Shakti – National Mission Plan, to be unveiled on October 13, 2021, is a geographic information system-enabled platform that would consolidate data on infrastructure such as highways, rail lines, ports, inland waterways, telecom lines, and power lines into a single portal. The NMP platform provides integrated multimodal logistics planning and data-driven decision making.

"We held four meetings to identify the pain points. The fifth meeting on port-related connectivity issues will be held soon with chairmen of all ports," Sumita Dawra, special secretary at the Ministry of Commerce, said in a media briefing.

“So far 22 states have integrated their land records with Gati Shakti - NMP. Also, 14 social sectors ministries/departments have been boarded onto the NMP platform and are in advanced stages of integration to utilise the PM Gatishakti mechanism,” she said. Using the NMP, concerned ministries in collaboration with the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT) identified 156 infrastructure gaps relating to first and last-mile connectivity issues in major sectors of the economy such as coal, steel, fertiliser, ports, food, and public distribution.

The Union budget for 2023 allocates Rs 75,000 crore (including Rs 15,000 crore from private sources) to 100 key transport infrastructure projects designated for first and last-mile connectivity.

"The availability of existing telecom infrastructure in different states and other data layers has helped in rapid planning of the 5G network. This will enable faster network rollout and early availability of 5G services," Dawra said.

Better data layered planning made possible by the use of NMP has reduced costs for each project. On the Gatishakti NMP, a mobile application called "call before you dig" has been developed with the aim of preventing damage to underlying assets such as fiber optic cables, resulting in a loss of approximately Rs 3,000 crore per year.

The cost of constructing the Silchar-Jiribam-Imphal natural gas pipeline in Assam and Manipur was reduced from Rs. 1,150 crore to Rs. 1,100 crore thanks to the use of the NMP and a shorter overall length.

33 systems from seven ministries are integrated with the Unified Logistics Interface Platform (ULIP), which was introduced as part of the national logistics policy. All cargo containers exported or imported via domestic or foreign waters can be tracked thanks to ULIP.

"So far, 76 companies have signed non-disclosure agreements with ULIP to gain access to datasets. Fifteen more companies will probably join soon. To date, 57 million cargo containers have been tracked over the past six years. Major industry players such as Maruti Suzuki, DHL, UltraTech, TCIL, Tata Steel and Bosch are on board ULIP," said Abishek Chaudhary, vice president of National Industrial Corridor Development Corporation.