Road projects of Rs 2 L cr to be awarded in 2 years

NEW DELHI: The government will award road projects worth Rs 2,00,000 crore in the next two years, road transport & highways minister Kamal Nath said.

���We are going to award Rs 1,00,000 crore of projects this year and Rs 1,00,000 crore next year,��� Mr Nath said at a seminar organised by industry chamber Ficci.

National Highways Authority of India (NHAI), the apex highway development agency of the country, has already initiated bidding process for road projects worth Rs 50,000 crore in 2009-10, he said. The government has set a target of building 7,000 km of highways annually. At present, only about 1,500 km of highways are constructed in a year.

About 150 highway projects are already running behind schedule due to various reasons such as cost escalation, delay in land acquisition and poor performance of contractors.

In order to avoid delay in execution of road projects on account of land acquisition, the NHAI is setting up 150 special land acquisition units (SLUs) and 10 regional offices across the country. As per a recent survey, slow progress in land acquisition delayed 70% of the 190 infrastructure projects being implemented by various agencies.

In order to make highway projects more investor-friendly, the government is looking at ways to make rules flexible. It has already restructured the cost of various road projects by factoring in increased input cost.
Private developers have demanded relaxation in termination clause of the model concession agreement (MCA) and variability of concession period to make projects more viable.

The NHAI is implementing road projects under various phases on national highway development programme (NHDP). Meanwhile, India Infrastructure Finance Company (IIFCL) has sanctioned loans worth Rs 6,475 crore for 58 road projects with a total project cost of Rs 37,678 crore.