Health minister Jagat Prakash Nadda had previously maintained that the sector had no funding issues, but recently revealed documents show he now believes his department needs more money to meet its objectives.

India’s health ministry is likely to see a substantial increase in funding, after it warned that its programs were short of cash and sought more than $1.2 billion in additional money, according to government officials and documents.

The final numbers could change when finance minister Arun Jaitley presents the Budget for fiscal 2017-18 on Wednesday, February 1. But one official familiar with the numbers said the health ministry is expected to get a $1.5 billion, or 27%, increase in funding to around $7 billion.

This allocation acknowledges Prime Minister Narendra Modi administration that the country needs to ramp up spending on the sector.

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Successive administrations have faced criticism from public health advocates for spending only around 1% of India’s GDP on public health, less in percentage terms than countries like Afghanistan and Sierra Leone.

More than a million Indian children die every year before reaching the age of five. Hundreds of millions of poor people rely on India’s public health programs which provide basic services like vaccinations, disease prevention, and free drugs.

Until May last year, Jagat Prakash Nadda, the union health minister, had publicly maintained that the sector had no funding issues but needed to get better at spending the money it had.