Despite the pandemic still ravaging the nation and its economy, the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) has set an ambitious target to build new highways with a combined length of 4,600 km in the current fiscal year. Last fiscal, NHAI constructed a record 4,192 km of highways, up from 3,979 km developed in 2019-20 and 3,380 km in 2018-19.

Minister for road transport and highways hope that construction would touch 40 km/day in 2021-22 from 36.4 km a day in 2020-21.

With available streams of funds including budgetary outlays and the funds being realised through the toll-operate-transfer (TOT) route, the NHAI is optimistic that it could achieve the target with EPC and HAM projects.

Though the target for the current year appears to be a tall order, the NHAI believes that it could meet it with reliance on EPC projects and HAM projects. The authority has a robust stream of funds including budgetary outlays, borrowings, and the funds being realised through the toll-operate-transfer (TOT) route.

“The authority was confident in achieving the target set for the current fiscal even as there has been some impact on highway construction lately owing to a pandemic-induced labour shortage in some sites. Awards this year will be much more than the construction target, but that is being finalised,” NHAI Chairman S S Sandhu told Financial Express.

“There is some impact, not much. The impact varies from place to place. At some places, there is no impact; but at other places, 10-15 per cent of the workers have gone back. Overall, as of now, the impact is minimal or marginal,” he said when asked about the impact of lockdown and restrictions.

The capital cost of the projects awarded in 2020-21 amounts to Rs 1,71,226 crore. The capital cost of the projects awarded in 2019-20 and 2018-19 was Rs 81,324 crore and Rs 64,009 crore respectively. NHAI had earlier said that it hopes to award projects worth around Rs 2.25 lakh crore in the current fiscal.

Of the total projects awarded in 2020-21, two were on Build-Operate-Transfer (Toll) for a length of 132 km, 69 projects for a length of 2,609 km were on Hybrid Annuity Model (HAM) and the balance 70 projects for a length of 2,047 km are on Engineering, Procurement and Construction (EPC) model.

It is also noteworthy that in the year 2020-21, the Modi government has achieved a record-breaking milestone of constructing 37 kilometres highways per day which is unprecedented.

Other achievements of the ministry include an increase in the length of national highways over the last seven years from 91,287 km (as of April 2014) to 1,37,625 km (as on 20 March 2021).

Also the total budgetary outlay increased by 5.5 times, from Rs 33,414 crore in Financial Year 2015 to Rs 1,83,101 crore in Financial Year 2022.