Government Reviews National Highways Projects
Government has recently taken various policy measures to revive languishing/delayed NH projects. One such measure is one time fund infusion to revive and physically complete languishing NH projects under Public-Private Partnership (PPP) mode that have achieved at least 50% physical completion. Such infusion of moderate funding can quickly bring these projects to completion. This assistance will be provided by the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) from its overall budget corpus on loan basis for a short tenure at Bank Rate +2%. After completion of construction of such projects on Built-Operate-Transfer (BOT) (Toll) mode, the first charge on the toll receivables shall be ensured for NHAI. In case of projects on BOT (Annuity) mode, such loan will be recovered along with interest from the Annuities payable to the concessionaire. Further, Government has also permitted extension of concession period for languishing NH projects on BOT (Toll) mode for the period of delay not directly attributable to the concessionaire subject to the condition that tenure of the operation period would remain unchanged and the project has to be physically completed within the next three years. Similarly, payment of annuities corresponding to the actual period of delay not attributable to the concessionaire in case of languishing highways projects under BOT (Annuity) mode is also envisaged. Various steps have also been taken by the Government/ NHAI to remove the hurdles affecting the construction of NH projects includes streamlining of land acquisition and regulatory clearances, close coordination with other ministries, revamped Disputes Resolution Mechanism etc. NHAI has also decided not to award projects till all major pre-construction approvals are in-place for the project in order to avoid post bid delays and litigations.
This information was given by Minister of State for Road Transport & Highways, Shri Pon. Radhakrishnan in a written reply to a question in the Lok Sabha today.
