New Delhi, Feb 1 (IANS): The Centre plans to expand the list of sectors given the infrastructure status.

It was widely expected that the Centre might bestow infrastructure status to new sectors in the Union Budget FY23 that presented by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman in the Parliament on Tuesday.

Notably, the infra tag enables these sectors to avail tax breaks, incentives and credit on lower interest rates.

Till now, activities associated with laying of power and telecom transmission and distribution lines, roads, highways, railways and construction of facilities such as hospitals, affordable housing, power generation units, water treatment plants, SEZs and certain type of hotels, among others, were given such status.

Besides, these sectors are part of a harmonised master list for infrastructure sub-sectors. However, in April 2021, exhibition-cum-convention centre was added to the list.

Now the Centre plans to include data centres as well as energy storage systems in the list of sectors given the infrastructure status.

In her Budget speech on Tuesday, Sitharaman said: "Data centres and energy storage systems, including dense charging infrastructure and grid-scale battery systems, will be included in the harmonised list of infrastructure. This will facilitate credit availability for digital infrastructure and clean energy storage."