India plans to construct 40 km of highway daily this year

The ministry of road transport and highways (MoRTH) has exceeded the target for highway construction for financial year 2021, despite the ongoing pandemic and had constructed 13,505 km of National Highways till 31 March, 2021.

“Minister for Road Transport & Highways and Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises, Shri Nitin Gadkari said that the Government is giving utmost priority to the development of infrastructure and has set a target of road construction of worth Rs15 lakh crores in next two years,” Ministry of Road Transport and Highways said in statement on Saturday.

The minister was addressing the Indo-US Partnership Vision Summit on Friday.

India has lined up a large infrastructure capital expenditure plan and has already awarded 13,000 km length of roads involving an investment of ₹3.3 trillion under the ₹5.35 trillion Bharatmala project. The Union budget for fiscal 2022 increased the outlay for road transport and highways ministry to ₹1.18 trillion.

“Shri Gadkari was confident that the Ministry for Road Transport & Highways will achieve target of 40 kilometres per day of highways construction in current fiscal,” the statement added.

While there was an improvement in passenger and commercial vehicles traffic post the first pandemic wave, vehicular road traffic has since dipped due to the second wave that is raging across the country.

India has a 137,635 km of national highway network and the government is expecting a private investment of as much as ₹30,000 crore in the financial year 2021-22 through hybrid annuity mode and build-operate-transfer (BOT) projects.