Pinning hopes on infrastructure for job creation amid economic downturn, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman announced an allocation of Rs 1.18 trillion for the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways.
FM said that this is the ‘highest ever’ allocation for the department.
The states of Tamil Nadu, Kerala, West Bengal and Assam will get highways worth Rs 2.27 trillion in the next three years or so.
The FM in her Budget speech said, “National highway works of 3,500 km for Rs 1.03 trillion will be undertaken in Tamil Nadu, 1,100 km projects for Rs 65,000 crore in the state of Kerala, 675 km for Rs 25,000 crore in West Bengal and Rs 34,000 crore worth of projects in Assam in the next three years.
The ministry was allocated Rs 91,823 crore for FY21, which was later revised to Rs 1.02 trillion as MoRTH and its wings — National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) and National Highways and Infrastructure Development Corporation (NHIDCL) were on track with road construction.
The total budget allocation has gone up from Rs 83,015 crore last fiscal to Rs 91,823.2 crore for financial year 2020-2021. Of this hike of ₹8,808 crore, as much as Rs 5,809 crore is through investment in NHAI met from monetisation of national highways. The balance allocation is for road works.
Highways Minister Nitin Gadkari recently said his ministry aims at taking the road building target to 40 km a day by March and added that the NHAI has a target to build 60,000 km of highways in the next five years, including 2,500 km of expressways.
These include 9,000 km of economic corridors, and 2,000 km each of strategic border roads and coastal roads. Besides these, 100 tourist destinations and 45 towns would be connected through highways.
Also the share of EPC (engineering-procurement-construction) projects or government-funded projects was 60% in the total project mix of NHAI, last year.
NHAI accomplished construction of 3,979 km of national highways in the financial Year 2019-20.
The government has envisaged an ambitious highway development programme — Bharatmala Pariyojana –which includes development of about 65,000 km national highways.
Under Phase-I of the programme, the government has approved implementation of 34,800 km of national highways projects with a very stiff target of 5 years with an outlay of Rs 5.35 trillion.
FM on Monday said that 13,000 km highway projects under the Bharatmala scheme have been completed.
Sitharaman said that another 8,500 km will be awarded by March 2022 and 11,000 km projects are expected to be completed by the time.
