Delays in decision making, flawed pacts hurt road sector: NHAI

NEW DELHI: National Highway Authority of India chairman RP Singh has called for a subsidy and more funds for infrastructure, saying poor policies and indecision were responsible for the “dismal” state of infrastructure in the country.

“The infrastructure situation is dismal; the pace of investment is sub-optimal and unless we come out of the subsidy regime and inject substantially more funds into capital expenditure for asset creation, the situation will not look up,” Singh said at an infrastructure summit organised by Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industries ( FICCI).

Calling for total transparency in publicprivate partnership (PPP) projects, Singh said developers had a tendency to pass on the risk to the government when the projects become unviable. Aggressive bidding by private developers has also led to stalling of various projects, he said.

The government has terminated 34 PPP projects in the roads sector costing over Rs38,000 crore through a ‘golden handshake’. These projects would now be implemented through EPC—engineering, procurement and construction— route after preparing the detailed project report with updated costs.

Singh also lamented politicisation of the sector, in particular the way state highways were declared national highways during the UPA rule, signalling out Tamil Nadu, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan.

TR Baalu held the charge of road ministry between 2004 and 2009 while Kamal Nath was the road minister during 2009. CP Joshi held the post from 2011 to 2013.

“No study has ever been done, not even by the Planning Commission, on the optimal road grid required. Basic decisions on these aspects are not taken with care and the tendency is to go on declaring roads as national highways,” he said. The road ministry is planning to make amendments in the model concession agreement (MCA) after the Cabinet gave it permission for highway projects in August.