NHAI projects worth Rs 1.22 lakh cr in 2017-18

The National Highway Authority of India (NHAI) on Saturday said it has awarded 150 road projects of 7,400 km, worth 1.22 lakh crore in the 2017-18 fiscal, which is highest in its history.

In the last fiscal (2016-17), a total of 4,335km of highways projects were awarded, while earlier the average length of road projects awarded by the NHAI was just 2,860 km in a year.

Compared to past years, the length of projects awarded in 2017-18 is an all-time high and a record achievement by NHAI since its inception in 1995.

Out of the total projects awarded in the last fiscal, 3,791 km of length was awarded on Engineering Procurement and Constitution (EPC) mode at a cost of Rs 43,000 crore, 3,396 km was awarded on Hybrid Annuity mode at a cost of Rs 76,500 crore and 209 km on toll mode at a cost of Rs 2,500 crore.

In the EPC mode, the NHAI will fund the project and contractors have to complete the project and in hybrid annuity mode, the government pays only 40% of the cost during the construction stage, while the developer has to raise the remaining 60% in the form of equity or loans.

Once the project is completed, the developer will get the remaining money from the government. In the toll mode, the developer has to fund and can collect toll from road users.

Tendering and awarding projects picked up only after the sanction of the ambitious Bharatmala programme and subsequent new procedure for sanction were put in place in November 2017, said the NHAI in a statement.

During this drive, post-Bharatmala, 232 projects were put on tenders involving around 11,200 km of road length costing more than Rs 1,96,000 crore.

To expedite land acquisition, a number of retired officers were employed and strong monitoring mechanisms were put in place.

But for the delay in land acquisition in some states, the award figures could have been still higher.

It is expected that projects of around 3,000 km shall be awarded in the first two months of the 2018-19 fiscal.