Cabinet approves 8 high-speed corridors estimated at Rs 50,655 crore

The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs, chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, on Friday approved the development of eight national high speed corridor road projects with a length of 936 km at a cost of Rs 50,655 crore, aimed at improving logistics efficiency, reducing congestion and enhancing connectivity across the country.

“Implementation of these eight projects will generate an estimated 4.42 crore mandays of direct and indirect employment,” the government said in a statement issued after the meeting.

The projects are spread across Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Maharashtra and Assam.


Realizing the importance of infrastructure in overall economic growth of the country, the government has taken up constructing world-class road infrastructure in the country over the last ten years.

As a result, the length of National Highways (NH) has increased about l.6 times to 1.46 lakh km now from 0.91 lakh km in 2013-14. Besides, the average annual pace of award of NH contracts has increased by 2.75 times to 11,000 km in 2014-24 from about 4,000 km in 2004-14 while the average annual construction is up by about 2.4 times to 9,600 kn in 2014-24 from about 4,000 km in 2004-14.

The total capital investment in National Highways including private investment has increased by six times to Rs 3.1 lakh crore in 2023-24 from Rs 50,000 crore in 2013-14. The government is of the view that every rupee spent on infrastructure development has a multiplier effect of about 2.5-3.0 times on GDP.

The government has adopted a corridor-based highway infrastructure development approach with focus on ensuring consistent standards, user convenience and logistics efficiency, as compared to the earlier project-based development approach, focused on addressing stretches of local congestion.

“This corridor approach has led to the identification of a network of 50,000 km of high-speed highway corridors through a scientific transport study based on GSTN and toll data to support India’s transformation into an over $30 trillion economy by 2047,” it said.