Union Road Transport and Highways Minister Kamal Nath today admitted that he had failed to expedite highway projects in the country. He said that the deadline set to award 124 road projects during this financial year has been extended from March 2010 to June next year.

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“We have set a deadline to award around 12,000 km of road projects by March 2010, which is not happening. The award process for all the projects will be completed by June next year, Nath said at an economic editors’ conference here.

The minister had set a target of building roads at a rate of 20 km a day and had asked the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) to come up with an annual work plan to award projects.

In the work plan-I, made for the first year, the authority had planned to award 124 projects worth Rs 1 lakh crore and totaling around 12,000 km by the end of this financial year. In contrast, the authority has been able to award only 17 projects since January this year.

Nath said an Empowered Group of Ministers (EGoM) would meet later this month to explore financing options for highways projects.

Nath added that the EGoM, which includes Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee, Planning Commission Deputy Chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia and himself, would also examine how external commercial borrowings can be accessed for the road and highways sector.

The minister also said that a separate division has been created in NHAI to look at the requirements of expressways.

For decentralising NHAI, which had been on Nath’s agenda since day one, as many as 10 regional offices of the authority would be set up and six executive directors would be posted at different locations for better coordination with state governments for highway development.

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