NHAI to develop highways relevant to increase logistics & competitive efficiency of freight: Raghav Chandra

The National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) is developing those highways which are extremely relevant from the point of view of increasing the logistics and competitive efficiency of the freight, its chairman, Raghav Chandra said at an ASSOCHAM event. We have got A.T. Kearney which has undertaken a massive study of examining movements across all our highways and they have mapped them in terms of the time that it takes for movement of commercial vehicles across these highways and a result of which we have selected specific highways which need to be either augmented, or which need to be further improved, said Chandra.

Several choke points have been identified where traffic is held up for many hours and we are looking at improving not only those highways but also readdressing those choke points, said Chandra.

 

There is greater emphasis to focus more on quality than on cost, on a corridor approach Vs piecemeal road approach, economic and logistical efficiency improvements, choke points removals, interchanges and multi-modal redressals, said the NHAI chief while highlighting how the organisation's working is going to be different from what it had been earlier.

For instance, between Delhi and Gurgaon, we have a massive Delhi-decongestion plan and as part of that we are building several flyovers, underpasses and interchanges just to reduce the kind of time it takes between Delhi and Gurgaon, he added.

He also said that he had personally met the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) governor and impressed upon him the need to declare the highway sector in particular as a priority sector.

Talking about the need for a very credible toll regime in India, he said, Unfortunately a lot of people think that the tolls are taxes whereas tolls are the user charges and the entire public private partnership is predicated on the credibility of the toll regime.

He said that India requires a huge amount of investment in the infrastructure sector. There is a need for private sector infrastructure financing and suitable models, instruments so that the private sector is able to deal with infrastructure development in a credible manner, for this a suitable, consistent and credible toll regime is extremely important.

Chandra also informed that the NHAI plans to award projects worth about Rs 1 lakh crores every year and there is an adequate envelope of roads with it to be able to keep doing this for the next ten years.

This year alone we have already awarded projects worth about 2,500 kilometers for about Rs 35,000 crores and by the end of the year we should have bid out projects for about Rs 1 lakh crores and actually awarded projects worth about Rs 70,000 crores, he said.

He said that the NHAI was also looking at connecting SEZs (special economic zones) and smart cities, port connectivity projects and all this is integrated in a larger scheme called the Bharatmala Yojana which is in the final stages of approval.

He said that building green-field expressways will be the game changer and that is the way forward in the future. Electronic tolling systems is another area of focus.

Talking about the significant efforts made by the NHAI to revive the highway sector, he said, There was a time about two years ago when about 100 projects were stalled in which over a course of about three years, not a single rupee had been spent, not a single kilometer of new roads had been built on those projects.

We are happy to say that we have reduced that envelope from about a year and a half ago to 19 projects and today out of them clearly we have got another 7-8 out of those projects rolling once again, said Chandra.

He lauded the government for bringing out several initiatives for the road sector to restore faith of the private developers and to support them.

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