Govt bid to infuse life into infra projects

New Delhi : Amid the slowdown buzz, the government has started work on firing infrastructure activity with the road ministry seeking nod to spend up to Rs 60,000 crore in upgrading 15,000 km of national highways. The proposal awaiting Cabinet approval envisages earmarking funds that are equivalent to the highway construction expenditure undertaken during the last three years, which was estimated at around Rs 70,000 crore.

In 2010-11, around Rs 29,600 crore was spent under different phases of the National Highway Development Programme (NHDP). In the previous two financial years, the expenditure was estimated at Rs 20,000 crore each. The latest set of upgradation, which would be taken up under what is being referred to as NHDP-IVB, envisages upgradation of stretches to two-lane highway stretches with paved shoulders. Sources in the National Highway Authority of India (NHAI) said that most of these projects would not be commercially viable for private developers and few are expected to bag contracts under the build-operate- transfer (BOT-toll) model. This means these projects would either go to private players as annuity projects or the government has to award them as cash contracts.