NHAI to speed up project award for 7,000-km target

The National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) plans to fast track project award to meet its target of 7,000 km by the end of the current financial year. Projects totalling about 2,400 km are expected to be awarded over the next six weeks.

A senior official in the ministry of road transport and highways, who did not want to be identified, told Business Standard, “NHAI has already awarded projects totalling 4,600 km in the current financial year and plans to award projects totalling 2,400 km more by March-end.”

Another official though added that a lot depends on the approvals and put the project-award figure for the current year at a more conservative 6,000 km.

Last week, new Road Transport Minister C P Joshi held a meeting of all stakeholders and decided to form a monitoring committee with representation from all sides.

Projects totalling about 1000 km are awaiting clearance of the Public-Private Partnership Appraisal Committee. “We have almost completed the award of projects totalling 6,000 km and the rest 1,000 km will depend on the approvals from Public-Private Partnership Appraisal Committee. If the approval comes in time, we will move towards achieving the target of 20 km a day and award 7,000 km of road projects,” said a senior NHAI official, on condition of anonymity.

The performance of the road transport ministry has not been up to the mark raising lot of questions over the implementing agencies. According to a recent report by the ministry of statistics and programme implementation, NHAI widened or upgraded only 859.93 km of roads against a target of 1,168.97 km.

The progress was 33 per cent lower than 1,283 km achieved during the corresponding period last year. A review in August by the Planning Commission also presented bleak picture of the infrastructure ministries.

The road transport and highways ministry has been given a target to spend Rs 35,680 crore in 2010-11 to construct 2,500 km of highways. Overall, the infrastructure ministries could spend only 61.27 per cent of the total allocation of Rs 29,934.67 crore in the first quarter.

Various reasons like absence of a permanent chairman and allegations of bungling in the award of road projects, leading to raids by the Central Bureau of Investigation, have been given for the performance.

“The minister listened to all the complaints in the meeting last week and decided to form a monitoring committee with representation from all stakeholders but nothing was decided on the way forward,” said an official, who attended the meeting but did not want to be named.