97 highway projects entailing ₹1-lakh crore investments ready to be awarded: NHAI chief.

The highway sector is poised for rapid growth as new opportunities unfold for construction of highways, according to Raghav Chandra, Chairman, National Highways Authority of India.

The focus is on development with a changed approach from output-based thinking to outcome-based thinking where PPP projects will be not only for construction component but for service aspect in highways development.

He said “the national highway management has moved from construction-based to service-based achievement approach aimed at enhancing competitiveness and user satisfaction.”

Addressing the National Conference on Highways Construction Technology, Chandra spoke of green highway projects and the importance of safety in the highways. He said NHAI is keen to have private players to patrol the national highways, which would help in traffic management and maintain road discipline.

The NHAI official said more than 30,000 km of road projects are in the pipeline. NHAI has around 250 projects across the country. He said it is expected to spend about $15-16 billion during 2016-17. The sale of construction equipment too has gone up indicating good times ahead, he said.

Some 97 projects with total length of 6,631 km, which entail an investment of ₹1 lakh crore, are to be awarded during 2016-17, he said.

The projects include Vadodara –Mumbai 6/8 lane Expressway (Phase I ), Surat-Mumbai with a spur to Mumbai-Pune expressway and JNPT in Phase II, Delhi-Jaipur expressway, 6-8 lane semi-elevated Delhi-Meerut expressway, Somnath-Porbander-Dwarka section of NH-8E, Bihar/Jharkhand border-Barwa, Hospet-Bellary NH-63, Tamil Nadu Karnataka Border Bengaluru section of NH-209, Solapur-Bijapur section of NH-13, Salasar-Nagpur section of NH-65, Vikravandi-Thanjavur section of NH-45C, and four laning of Nagpur-Wardha-Nanded-Solapur-Ratnagiri section of NH-36.

Some of the projects awaiting approval include Hyderabad-Vijayawada-Amaravati Expressway of 278 km (₹2,673 crore), Nagpur-Hyderabad expressway of 505 km (₹483 crore), Hyderabad-Bangalore Expressway, Kanpur-Lucknow Expressway, Ring Road Expressway at Amaravati, and Delhi-Amritsar-Katra Expressway of 600 km (₹2125 crore).

NV Shetty, Chairman of Conference and COO, GMR Highways Ltd, said, the Highways sector contributes about 5-6 per cent of the country’s GDP growth. This is largely driven by the initiatives of the Government.

HBL