3 foreign cos among 13 in race for mega road project

Thirteen companies, including one each from Britain, France and Australia, have bid for the country’s first Rs 5,700-crore mega road project covering Rajasthan and Gujarat.

The 570-km highway project from Kishangarh near Jaipur in Rajasthan to Ahmedabad in Gujarat through Udaipur, is the first among the nine projects, conceived by the the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI), for which bids were invited in May.

“The bid for construction of the Kishangarh-Udaipur-Ahmedabad mega road project is under evaluation. We have received 13 bids for that project, including from reputed international players like Britain’s Balforur Beatty,” NHAI Chairman Brijeshwar Singh said.

Elaborating, he said, by a thumb rule, construction of a km of a national highway of this type would cost around Rs 10 crore and hence the project size could be around Rs 5,700 crore.

Australian firm Leighton, Britain’s Balforur Beatty and Vinci of France in consortium with Hindustan Construction Company (HCC) have submitted their bids for the project.

Last year, Minister for Road Transport and Highways Kamal Nath had announced that the Ministry would invite bids for construction of nine mega road projects, entailing an investment of around Rs 5,000 crore each.

The NHAI is speeding the process of awarding these road projects to successful bidders. “These projects are a steady evolution and we are looking at speedy award of these projects,” Singh said.

The government has set a target for constructing 35,000 km of highways in the next five years under the National Highways Development Programme, which will require an estimated investment of about $60 billion (Rs 2,79,000). Of this, $40 billion (Rs 1,86,000) will come from the private sector.

The country at present has a network of 71,000 km of National Highways.