NEW DELHI, June 27 — India is set to revive 260 road projects involving about Rs60,000 crore (US$9.98 billion) that is currently stalled due to various reasons such as land acquisition and cash crunch faced by contractors.
India’s Ministry of Road Transport, Highways and Shipping is also considering to undertake highway building under Engineering, Procurement and Construction (EPC) Model in place of Public Private Partnership (PPP).
Financing at low interest rates is also being explored for this new model, the Minister, Nitin Gadkari (pic), said on Tuesday.
“Over 260 projects involving about Rs60,000 crore that were taken up in PPP model are currently stalled because of various reasons. Out of this amount, large percentage has also become Non Performing Assets (NPA) for the banks,” he said at a media briefing.
The Minister had been reviewing the stalled projects in various states over the last two days and said that to solve the issue, costing of over Rs40,000 crore (US$6.65 billion) had been discussed which is to be resolved now.
Gadkari said that after two years, a target of building roads at a rate of 30 Kms per day will be set, pointing out that currently, it was even becoming difficult to build roads at a rate of 3 Kms per day.
He pointed out that the bottlenecks which hindred speedy completion of the highways included problems relating to land acquisition, railway lines, environmental and forest department clearances and cash crunch facing the contractors.
He hoped that State Governments will also cooperate in building roads and developing infrastructure in the country.
He also announced that road building works amounting to about Rs20,000 crore (US$3.33 billion) will be undertaken in Ladakh, Leh regions of Jammu & Kashmir to promote tourism, apart from infrastructure. a tunnel alone is to cost Rs10,000 crore (US$1.66 billion).
A special corporation is also proposed to be set up to undertake road projects in the North-eastern States of the country, the minister said.
— BERNAMA
