Govt to invite bids for three mega road projects

The government would invite bids by the end of this year for three mega projects worth around Rs 14,500 crore in the road sector, Union Road Transport and Highways Minister Kamal Nath said on the sidelines of the annual convention of the Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers (Siam) here.

“We will invite bids for three mega projects by the end of this year, we are looking at mega projects in which each project for building 500 km of road will be worth $1 billion,” Nath told at the Siam conference.

Nath said at the Indian Road Congress seminar that the total project cost (TPC) of several projects was half of the real cost and the consultants needed to post the fair TPC of highway projects.

“We have found that in case of several projects, the TPC is almost half of the real cost. It has to be a realistic estimate and as close as possible to the real price,” the minister said.

Nath also said the domestic contractors needed international financing and the government had taken initiative to create conducive environment for this. “We have also started the work on setting up regional centres of the National Highways Authority of India and the delegation of power has to happen,” Nath said.

“We are going to put in place 11,000 km of roads worth Rs 1 lakh crore in 2009-10 under Work Plan I,” Nath said, adding that challenges in capacity-building would be addressed and all corrections would be made by September 30.

He said India’s automobile industry should aim at producing 25 million vehicles by 2015 for, for which his ministry would build the necessary road network.

Earlier, he had said 20 km of roads would be built every day in the next two years, amounting to an investment of Rs 2 lakh crore.