Govt to build 59,000-km rural roads in FY18

The government plans to spend around Rs 81,000 crore on the Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana

Encouraged by the success in building over 47,000 km of rural roads till the end of 2016-17, according to preliminary estimates, the Centre now hopes to construct 59,000 km of roads in rural areas in 2017-18 at a rate of 150 km a day.

Though officially it has pegged a target of building around 55,370 km in 2017-18, officials said they were confident of building much more than that. 

In 2016-17, the Centre had targeted building around 48,000 km of rural roads, of which, according to preliminary estimates, till the end of March over 47,000 km has been built.

“The pace of work seen in the past few years has instilled confidence that we would manage to exceed the target in 2017-18,” the official said. 

He said the pace of road construction would be raised to 150 km per day from the 133 km a day achieved in 2016-17.

From 2011 to 2014, roads in rural areas under the Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana (PMGSY) were constructed at 70-75 km per day. And in the next two years, 2014-16, the rate increased to 100 km per day.  In 2016-17, against the target of connecting 15,000 habitations, the Centre managed to connect over 12,000 habitations, according to preliminary estimates.

In the last two years, the Centre managed to build around 5,000 km of roads through green technology, which includes using waste plastic, fly ash, cold mix, jute and coir geo-textiles, copper and iron slag. The government plans to spend around Rs 81,000 crore on the PMGSY. Of that the Centre’s own share will be around Rs 57,000 crore over the next few years. The PMGSY, launched in 2000, during the previous NDA regime, has been one of most focused programmes of the government to boost the rural economy.