Road Transport and Highways ministry seeks Rs 13,000 crore soft loan for highways

21 Jan 2016 Evaluate

In order to get support for certain projects under National Highway Development Project (NHDP), the road transport and highways ministry is seeking a soft loan of Rs 13,000 crore from multilateral agencies for its highway projects. It has approached Japanese International Cooperation Agency (JICA) for a long-term untied loan of Rs 6,000 crore to part fund its NHDP and the remaining amount has been sought from Asian Development Bank (ADB) which will be used for special projects. A soft loan from JICA means the roads ministry can get funds at 0.5% interest rate for a period of over 25 years.

Further, the government is in talks with ADB for Rs 24,000 crore bridge connecting India with Sri Lanka. However, the discussion is still at a primary stage. However, JICA is already funding projects of the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation and is also providing loans for the dedicated western freight corridor project of the railways as part of the special terms of economic partnership.

Moreover, the ministry could be mulling a loan agreement with state owned Life Insurance Corporation of India (LIC). India aims to increase the length of its highways by 50,000 km over the next five years, from 96,000 km now. The plan will require an investment of Rs 5 lakh crore. Recently, in a meeting with Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, Road Transport and Highways Minister Nitin Gadkari had sought a budgetary allocation of Rs 85,000 crore for 2016-17.

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