RISE IN LAND COST MAY HIT HIGHWAY SCHEMES
H
ighways ministry may have to cut down road
construction target by 28% under its
ambitious Bharatmala and NH development
programme, if it does not get additional Rs 3.15 lakh
crore funding till 2024-25, according to an official
estimate.
Officials said the ministry requires additional funds
primarily because of nearly three-fold increase in
cost of land acquisition as compared to what the
government had estimated in October 2017 when
the Cabinet had approved the plan to develop
35,000 km of NHs with estimated investment of Rs
5.35 lakh crore. Moreover, there has been 30%
increase in civil construction cost. These two factors
have made highway projects almost 64% more
expensive.
In case the ministry does not get the required funds,
it would be able to build only 25,000 km of NHs under
the ambitious Bharatmala Pariyojna and the NH
development programme. Officials said the problem
PAGE 28 I METROBERRY I JULY 2019
has become bigger as private investment has dried
up in the recent years.
Sources said majority of the projects appraised so
far by the NHAI Board, an inter-departmental
entity with representatives from the finance
ministry and Niti Aayog, are fully government-funded
ones and only two out of the 225 projects (9,163 km)
will be implemented under build, operate
and transfer (BOT) mode. “Getting private
investment still remains a challenge. But now we
have decided to push more projects on BOT,” said
an NHAI official.
Highways minister Nitin Gadkari said NHAI will
try to tap funds from National Investment
and Infrastructure Fund, the government’s first
sovereign wealth fund, foreign funds and by
auctioning the already completed projects. He
is learnt to have told officials to continue the
process of finding funds rather than waiting for a
crisis-like situation