The government has constituted an Empowered Group of Secretaries (EGoS) headed by Cabinet Secretary with Secretaries of 20 infrastructure and economic user ministries as members of EGoS to monitor implementation of PM GatiShakti. 

 

The first meeting of EGoS was held under the chairmanship of Cabinet Secretary and EGoS reviewed the progress made so far.  

 

Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched the PM GatiShakti National Master Plan for providing multimodal connectivity to various economic zones in the country. PM GatiShakti aims to reduce the logistics cost. Currently, the logistics cost in India is about 13% of the GDP whereas in other developed countries it is to the extent of 8%. 

 

The government is committed to reduce the cost of logistics to ensure competitiveness of India's manufacturing sector, better realization of prices to farmers, and availability of goods at cheaper prices to consumers.

 

Bhaskaracharya Institute for Space Applications and Geoinformatics (BISAG-N), which has developed the National Master Plan informed the EGoS that over 300 layers of data has been mapped on to GIS based national master plan. It was further informed that all the central ministries and most of the state governments have started updating their required layers.  

 

The Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT), being the nodal department for PM GatiShakti informed about the administrative arrangements made for monitoring and coordination of PM GatiShakti. Network Planning Group (NPG) comprising representatives from 7 central ministries has already been constituted and a high powered expert group of professionals is being constituted to support the NPG.  

 

The EGoS has decided to compile the infrastructural gaps as felt by various economic ministries and this is to be forwarded to the concerned infrastructure ministry for appropriate consideration to include in the annual action plan for next financial year. Decision was made to study the multimodal connectivity to all the economic zones in the country on priority so that gaps are identified. 

 

Any system or process, which is causing enhanced logistics cost are to be identified and deliberated upon and measures are to be taken including necessary administrative decisions so as to reduce cost.  

 

EGoS emphasized the need for digitisation. It was felt necessary to integrate all management information systems differently so as to enable ease of usage. EGoS has also emphasized that all the ministries should include in their planning logistics cost reduction at the core so as to achieve the objective of PM GatiShakti.