Joshi says building 20 km a day realistic

The new financing plan revises the target of 11,092 km set by erstwhile roads minister Kamal Nath even though the daily target for achieving 20 km a day remains same.

We are drawing out a plan for each and every stretch to be constructed during 2011-12 so that the daily construction record for national highways touches 20 km a day, a senior government official associated with the process said.

In the previous fiscal the government constructed only 5,000 km of highways even though the target was fixed at over 11,000 km.

With the target down to 7,300 km NHAIs market borrowings initially projected to be over Rs 20,000 crore for the current fiscal will now be around Rs 10,000 crore only for which the authority has already issued tax free bonds, a NHAI official said.

The plan includes award and construction of two lane and four lane highways.

Even though a final investment figure has not been arrived at all estimates will be based on a construction cost of Rs 3.5 crore per km for two-lane highways with paved shoulders and 9.5 crore per km for four-lane highways, the official said.

The projects would be a mix of build-operate-transfer (BOT) toll,annuity and engineering-procurement-construction (EPC). While 60 per cent of the projects will be bid out on BOT toll,25 per cent will be bid under annuity mode and the balance 15 per cent on EPC, Joshi said.

The E-GoM also took a decision on the dispute resolution mechanism for unlocking Rs 11,000 crore stuck in disputes between National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) and developers.