NHAI plans 5,000 km roads per year

The National Highways Authority of India is working to identify bottlenecks in the road construction sector to up its average yearly road construction bar of 4,000 kilometres.

Filling the gaps in the system will help the authority increase yearly construction by at least 1,000 km to begin with, a senior NHAI official said.

“We are looking at bottlenecks in the system,” the official told ET. “We need to increase our construction to 5,000 km per year. For that leap, we need to de-clog the system.”


The official said the biggest issue is receiving permission from states to begin construction work. Forest clearances remain a concern as well.

Vinayak Chatterjee, chairman of infrastructure services firm Feedback Infra, said, “Real bottlenecks in the system are land acquisition and utility removal, which require streamlining further.”

Permission from other government departments, with respect to, say, removal of transmission lines or railway-related works also holds back execution work, he said.