NHAI aims to construct 23 new highways by 2025
ROADS & HIGHWAYS

NHAI aims to construct 23 new highways by 2025

To ensure uninterrupted and efficient movement of people and cargo, the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) has announced the construction of 23 new highways, including a network of expressways and economic corridors, scheduled for completion by March 2025. Of these, four expressways – Del...

To ensure uninterrupted and efficient movement of people and cargo, the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) has announced the construction of 23 new highways, including a network of expressways and economic corridors, scheduled for completion by March 2025. Of these, four expressways – Delhi-Mumbai, Ahmedabad-Dholera, Ambala-Kotpulli, and Amritsar-Jamnagar – will be ready by March 2023. Nine others will be constructed by March 2024. The remaining nine greenfield highways will be completed by March 2025. As reported, projects having 2023 and 2024 deadlines will be bid out by 2021. Spread across 7,800 km, the entire initiative would require an investment of about Rs.3.3 trillion in a span of five years. The network of expressways will connect Surat, Solapur, Lucknow, Visakhapatnam, Chennai, Bengaluru, Vijayawada, Raipur, Kota, Kharagpur and Siliguri. These mega projects will accelerate the sluggish economy by giving rise to numerous employment opportunities while boosting material demand. To fast-track the Delhi-Mumbai Expressway project, the NHAI has formed a special purpose vehicle (SPV). The SPV is registered as DME Development and owned by NHAI. This will lead to easy financing at cheaper rates, including pension and insurance funds. NHAI has a sovereign guarantee, being a statutory entity, thus investors face zero risks. The SPV will also facilitate the financing, construction and operation of the greenfield expressway. The primary aim of the NHAI behind floating an SPV to a specific corridor is to develop a sustainable approach to raise finance and diversify its resource base. Spanning 1,275 km, the Delhi-Mumbai Expressway is an eight-lane expressway with a design speed of around 120 km per hour. With a provision to expand to 12 lanes in future, it will be India's longest greenfield expressway. Currently, cargo in India covers about 400 km per day, which is 50 per cent of global standards. Thus, there is abundant scope to reduce the cost and time by 50 per cent. To recover all the investment in this project, a model called ‘trade operate and transfer’ (TOT) has been designed, wherein auctioning will be held for tolling rights for 15-20 years to a private entity to receive the money upfront. If the model turns out to be successful, it will be utilised for other major expressway projects as well. Major reforms in the NHAI are being undertaken in terms of decentralisation of work and division of power by the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways (MoRTH). The IRB Westcoast Tollway, another SPV that commissioned the 189.6-km Goa-Karnataka border-Kundapur four-lane highway project in February, is now open for vehicular traffic. Built at Rs.34.47 billion, the project has a concession life of 28 years.

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