Highways development to be accelerated, 15,500 km projs on anvil;Del-Mum expressway in 3 yrs: FM

To augment infrastructure, an accelerated highways development programme will be taken up that includes constructing 15,500 kms of highways including 9,000 kms of economic corridors, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said on Saturday.

The budgetary allocation for the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways has also been enhanced to Rs 91,823.22 crore as against Rs 83,016 crore earlier.

"Accelerated development of highways will be undertaken. This will include development of 2500 Km access control highways, 9000 Km of economic corridors, 2000 Km of coastal and land port roads and 2000 Km of strategic highways," Sitharaman said.

Tabling the Union Budget 2020-21 in Parliament, Sitharaman said the Delhi-Mumbai Expressway will be completed in three years, in addition to two more express highway projects.

"Delhi-Mumbai Expressway and two other packages would be completed by 2023," she said.

Work on Chennai-Bengaluru Expressway would also be started, she said.

Welcoming the Budget as growth oriented, Road Transport and Highways Minister Nitin Gadkari said it is full of innovative initiatives for aspirational India.

"A massive boost to investment in infrastructure, MSME, affordable housing, agriculture, irrigation, rural development, solar energy, education, healthcare and drinking water and sanitation and enhanced allocations for different sectors would help revive industrial production and generate employment opportunities creating more than two crore jobs," he said.

The Budge for 2020-21 sees enhanced allocation for Ministry of Road Transport and Highways at Rs 91,823.22 crore.

Terming a sound highways network essential to propel the economy, the Economic Survey had on Friday said the highways sector needs Rs 19.63 lakh crore investment by 2024-25.

Total investment in the roads and highway sector has gone up more than three times in the five-year period of 2014-15 to 2018-19, the survey had said.

Of about 59.64 lakh kms of roads in India, total length of National Highways was 1.32 lakh kms as on March 1, 2019.

"The pace at which roads have been constructed has grown significantly from 17 km per day in 2015-16 to 29.7 km per day in 2018-19," it said.

Road transport is the dominant mode of transportation in terms of its contribution to Gross Value Added (GVA) and traffic share.

The share of transport sector in the GVA for 2017-18 was about 4.77 per cent, of which the share of road transport is the largest at 3.06 per cent, followed by railways (0.75 per cent), air transport (0.15 per cent) and water transport (0.06 per cent).