Ms Sitharaman further said that the recently-launched national monetisation pipeline includes only Central government assets, while state assets have been out of its purview as of now. The minister suggested that there is a significant potentially monetizable asset base in states which could be leveraged to enhance the capital available for new infrastructure creation and other social sector pressing priorities. Ms Sitharaman urged the states to help India become the fastest growing economy in coming years, through facilitating investment attractiveness and expediting ease of doing business measures and undertaking power reforms with regard to reduction in AT&C and ACS-RRR.

The Finance Minister further emphasised that since in many cases land is one of the major bottlenecks for project on-grounding, states must contrive to smoothen land acquisition procedures and create land banks to be tapped at the time of investment. She urged the states to strengthen their urban local bodies (ULBs) in light of the fact that there has been decidedly a larger allocation to ULBs than earlier. Since infrastructure projects require technical assistance in addition to financial resources, Ms Sitharaman said that the line ministries and the Department of Economic Affairs would extend all possible cooperation for technical or advisory assistance to the states.

Moreover, the viability gap funding provision will help finance socially relevant but financially unviable projects, especially across social sectors. The Finance Minister said that she is looking forward to listening to the states and understanding their ideas and plans in the direction of investment enhancement. In the open interaction, each of the states enumerated the list of reforms and proactive policies they are pursuing to establish good governance and to facilitate investment.