The Ministry of Road Transport and Highways was in a position to bid out contracts for the construction of 8,000 km of roads within the current financial year, Planning Commission Deputy Chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia indicated today.

The ministry, along with the Planning Commission, has reworked certain modalities of the bidding process after it failed to find private sector firms to undertake the government’s road building programme in the wake of the global financial crisis. “We got hardly any bids for road projects that were bid out. We reviewed this situation internally with the Ministry of Roads and modified certain parts of the model concession agreement,” Ahluwalia said here at a conference organised by the Confederation of Indian industry via video-conferencing from New Delhi.

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Montek hints at easing of food prices in Jan
The Planning Commission today said that escalating food prices were expected to rationalise in the coming month, but indicated that it would take more than just a re-adjusted monetary policy to keep the prices of essential food items at reasonable levels.

“I am of the view that in January you will see a decline in the food prices. What we see now is a speculative build-up of prices, probably because of the consequences of the drought in the middle of this year. The fact is that the drought has been less damaging than what people thought,” Planning Commission Deputy Chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia said.

Ahluwalia, who was speaking at a CII-organised summit via video-conferencing from New Delhi, said public stocks of cereals were adequate and their prices could be easily moderated.“But vegetables and potatoes are not things that are in the public stock,” he added.

Suggesting that the recent inordinate rise in food prices was partially caused due to inadequacies in the distribution mechanism, he said an increase had been anticipated.

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