Highway cess

The authority has not tapped the market this year compared with the target of Rs 3,300 crore. The highways and transport ministry managed to spend Rs 2,248 crore, which is half of the targeted expenditure of Rs 5,790 crore for 2004-05.

The comfortable financial position is evident from the fact that NHAI offered to pre-pay Rs 804 crore of its debt from bonds issued in 2001.

Government officials said even though a proposal for a $400 million assistance from the Asian Development Bank was finalised, NHAI did not ink the deal formally as it had sufficient funds for the project.

Officials said in 2003, NHAI bonds received a tremendous response, because of which it was able to garner about Rs 6,000 crore in just one month.

"Another reason why we did not need to raise funds this year was that the expected expenditure on the north-south (NS) and east-west (EW) corridor did not materialise," an NHAI official told Business Standard.

Officials said the delay in the 7,300 kilometre, north-south, east-west corridor was due to the fact that the government wanted to be cautious and not repeat the mistakes made in the phase-I of the national highway development programme or the Golden Quadrilateral project of the previous NDA government.

"We made three committees to address the problems faced in Golden Quadrilateral, especially with respect to pre-qualification. All the documents had to be revised with certain norms tightened," he said.

At present, only 9 per cent of a total 7,300 kilometers have been completed, but the government is expected to step up the progress during the year, he said. The government will award all contracts by May this year.

Keeping this in mind, the market borrowing target for the year has been kept at Rs 8,500 crore. NHAI is expected to go in for the first round of borrowings in the next two months, officials said.