Budget 2025-26-3275-Using Public–Private Partnership beyond Infrastructure: The Feasibility Question

The Union Budget 2025–26 has made a strong pitch for private sector participation in all forms of infrastructure development, including physical, digital, and social. The push for public–private partnerships is integral to the union’s efforts to revive the sluggish private capex. The experience with PPPs is a mixed bag. They have delivered the intended outcomes in roads, ports, and airports sectors, by achieving a reasonably efficient and equitable allocation of financial and regulatory risk. Spurring private investment across infrastructure sectors will require implementing sector-specific contractual and regulatory frameworks. The union and the states will have to work together to streamline and rationalise the thicket of complex regulation that continues to hold back private investments in PPPs.