H1 highway construction just over a quarter of annual target
The pace of highway construction fell sharply in September with only 371 km of stretches completed during the month which is much lower than the average of 639 km a month in the April-August period.
At the end of the first half of this financial year, highway stretches of a total of 3,567 km have been completed, while for the full year, the target is 13,800 km.
The awards for September have shown improvement of 530 km as compared to the average of 347 km in the April-August period. In the first half 2,286 km of highways have been awarded while in the previous year in the same period this figure stood at 4,092 km.
The pick up in awarding contracts for highways was expected as officials had said that issues responsible for the slowdown have been substantially addressed. For the full year the target for awarding of highways has been set at 12,500 km.
Of the total 12,500 km of highways to be awarded this FY, around half of it would be through National Highways Authority of India and rest through National Highways and Infrastructure Development Corporation and Ministry of Road Transport and Highways’ Road Wing.
The ambitious Bharatmala Project offers a strong pipeline of projects.
While pace of construction has slowed during September, the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways has reverted to its original plan of exhausting 91% of its capital outlay by December-end. In August this number was scaled down to 80%.
The resetting the spending target has been necessitated by expenditure of Ra 50170 crore in September. At the end of September the ministry had spent Rs 1.62 trillion or 62% of its capital expenditure outlay of Rs 2.58 trillion. Last year during the same period Rs 1.21 trillion had been spent by the ministry in the first half.
Despite a slower pace in the first half, the ministry is confident of meeting its aim of highway building this year. Last year too by December it had managed to complete 5744 km of highways and then speed picked up and by end of March the total length achieved was 10,331 km.