India Inc capex pipeline surges, but execution bottlenecks remain

Big companies in India are planning to build lots of new things, like power lines, factories and data centres.

In the first three months of the financial year, they announced projects worth about 14.8 lakh crore rupees, much more than before.

But announcing a project is easy; actually building it is hard.

Companies say they face problems like getting permission to use land, finding enough skilled workers and connecting sites to the electricity grid.

Some equipment, such as transformers, can take almost a year to arrive.

Around 43 GW of renewable energy deals have been awarded but no one has promised to buy the electricity yet.

To cope, companies are training workers, using machines instead of missing labour and even refusing risky projects.

One company set up a free three-month training centre in Jharkhand to teach people how to build power lines.

The good news is that fewer projects are getting stuck now than in the past.

India is getting better at finishing what it starts, and the big test is whether it can do that at a larger scale.