Funds allocation not enough: NHAI

The National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) says allocation for 2010-11 provided in the Union Budget last week is not sufficient to meet the demands of the coming financial year.

At the same time, it admitted of not being able to utilise this year’s funds allocation fully. “We cannot complain because we could not utilise the funds allocated for this financial year. The next year (2010-11), however, will be different. In fact, we will have to borrow funds from the market by the second half of the financial year,” said a senior NHAI official, who did not want to be identified.

He further said that they could not award many road projects in the last and current financial years because of recession in the world economy and issues with the concession agreement. He added that things have picked up and they need much more money to keep going.

The roads authority has brought down toll collection target by 4 per cent to Rs 1,623 crore. It also plans to award the maintenance of 1,400 km of roads to private players. “We will award the maintenance contract for many of our roads to private players, thus, impacting our toll revenue a bit,” another NHAI official said.

Allocation to NHAI this year has been increased by 27.9 per cent over the revised estimates to Rs 9,471 crore. The roads authority could not utilise 13.6 per cent of Rs 8,578 crore allocated in the last Budget. The allocation for road transport ministry has also been raised by over 13 per cent to Rs 19,894 crore from Rs 17,520 crore in this Budget.

In the last stint of the United Progressive Alliance government, development of roads took a hit and fell to 4 km a day from 14 km per day. The government with an aim to boost road construction in its second stint appointed Kamal Nath as the roads transport minister.

To bridge the infrastructure deficit, Nath set a target of building roads at a pace of 20 km per day. NHAI was asked to come up with a plan to expedite the process of awarding projects. The authority plans to award projects worth Rs 2 lakh crore by the end of the next financial year.