Revival in investor confidence: Expressway expansion draws private firms' interest.

In what could be a signal of the private sector's interest in the roads sector returning, the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) has received 15-16 bids from private companies for expansion of the Delhi-Panipat expressway at a cost of around Rs. 2,000 crore.

The request for proposal (RFP) would be invited soon and the award of project would follow, a senior NHAI official said. The expressway is to be widened further to have 12 lanes, including the service roads, under the build-operate-transfer (BOT) model. Though there have been award of a few projects under the BOT model in the current financial year, this is the first big project where NHAI has received bids from a number of private parties.

According to a senior ministry official, private players have again started showing interest in the roads sector, after a lull of two or three years. For a revival in the sector, the road transport and highways ministry recently formulated a new strategy under which bids for the same project would be floated under both EPC (engineering, procurement, construction) and PPP (public-private partnership) models. In the current financial year, NHAI has awarded 1,138 km of road projects, of which 511 km (three projects) has been awarded under the BOT model in public-private partnership, according to another NHAI official. The target is to award 3,700 km of projects through PPP and 2,300 km through the EPC mode this year.



BS