To boost the road sector, government has planned to spend Rs 7 lakh crore to develop around 50,000 kilometres of national highways over the next five years. Union Minister Nitin Gadkari has said that during the current financial year, the government has set a target of constructing 10,000 kilometres of greenfield highways, for which a budgetary allocation of Rs 46,834 crores has been made including cess and toll remittance for 2016-17.In addition, internal and extra budgetary resources of Rs 59.279 crores have also been allowed to be raised for highways in 2016-17.
The country at present has 96,000 km of national highways, which the Ministry wants to expand to 1,50,000 km over this period. The Minister noted that it was necessary to bring down the cost of construction and the government was taking various initiatives to ensure India becomes competitive globally. He added that the ministry was studying the construction codes of countries like US and Germany and create a code for India which will help reduce the cost of construction by almost 15-20 per cent.
Initially government has set a target of constructing Rs 5 lakh crore worth projects in five years. But considering the pace at which India is progressing, Gadkari said that there is a proposal to spend around Rs 7 lakh crores to develop National Highways of around 50,000 kilometres in the next five years. Acknowledging that road safety is a big problem in India, minister had earlier said that safe roads are of the highest priority for the government and that the US had assured full co-operation in meeting the challenge. The United States has promised technical help for the construction of roads, bridges, flyovers and also shares expertise in road safety and traffic management.
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