Road Transport and Highways Minister Nitin Gadkari has said that the road construction in India has accelerated to an all-time high pace of 20 kilometres per day. Gadkari also said that ‘We’ll touch our target of 30 kilometres per day in another five-six months.’ He said that the current pace is a third more than the previous best of 15 km per day achieved in 2012.
For the current fiscal year, the government has a target of constructing 10,000 km of greenfield highways, for which it has made a budgetary allocation of Rs 57,000 crore. Gadkari said that his ministry has proposed the formation of dispute resolution mechanism to the finance ministry for early implementation of stuck projects. About 14 road projects with an investment of over Rs 25,000 crore are stuck due to various reasons including cost escalation.
The minister further said that the government has already awarded contracts worth Rs 1.8 lakh crore and by 2017 it will award road construction projects worth Rs 3 lakh crore. He added that 'the emphasis has been on awarding the projects under the innovative hybrid annuity and toll-operate-transfer mode so that there are more opportunities for private sector investment.'