India hopes to cross the 9,800-km-mark in construction of roads by the end of financial year 2018. That’s the maximum length built in any of the last four years.

“Between April and December 2018, 6,700-6,800 km of roads were constructed. This (financial) year, we hope to construct more than last year (when we built about 9,800 km) as January to March is the period when maximum work gets done,” a Road Transport and Highways Ministry official told BusinessLine.

But the awards for newer roads may be lower this fiscal compared to the last. “This was a conscious strategy to award projects when they are ready to be built — complete with requisite acquisition of land, utility shifting clearance,” shared another official.

The contract terms for government-funded roads have been changed to ensure projects are awarded only when the pre-construction stage is reached.

To improve the quality of roads, their inspection was moved from subjective to objective criteria — by adopting equipment-based trials.

Building greenfield roads or expressways along the shortest routes where land acquisition cost will be low was another conscious strategy. Alongside highways, land parcels would be auctioned for building fuel, food outlets and multi-modal parks. This will ensure higher returns for the highways, apart from making expressways faster. In the Delhi-Mumbai Expressway, for example, the government saved a lot in land acquisition by opting for a new short route.

Funding constraints

However, building roads with private funding continues to be a challenge. Several highway builders found it difficult to borrow funds from banks. Most of the roads have been built with government funding — either through budgetary support, or funds mobilised by the government agency, the NHAI. Even banks such as SBI preferred to route funds for building roads through the NHAI instead of directly lending to highway developers.

The National Highways Authority of India is budgeted to borrow ₹62,000 crore this year, of which it had borrowed about ₹41,000 crore till early January, and plans to borrow another ₹10,000 crore through Bharatmala bonds. More budgetary support to fund the ballooning expenses instead of opting for market borrowing will help control NHAI’s debt.

e-tolls, Fastags

For highway users, more electronic toll payment choices were offered. For instance, 2018 alone saw a three-fold increase in sale of Fastags, cards that cut waiting at toll-booths. One-fourth of toll payers have already taken to using Fastags which are being integrated with e-way bill and pollution certificates.

Road safety has improved here with an over three per cent drop in accidents and one per cent reduction in deaths on roads, although India still has miles to travel to be in safe zone given it still accounts for the highest number of accidents globally. A new ‘logistics department’, formed under the Commerce Ministry, helped ease transport industry’s worries by pushing to legalise the extra load that trucks had been known to carry beyond the stipulated limit. Organised logistics players cheered when the Road Transport Ministry finally legalised what had been known as “overloading” all these years. However, transporters grappled with daily fluctuating fuel prices and demanded that fuel be brought under GST. On the daily-hailing cab side, as cab- aggregators cut commissions for drivers, they broke into protests.

The Motor Vehicle (Amendment) Bill, approved by Lok Sabha, did not pass through Rajya Sabha as concerns regarding cab-aggregators, fate of State road transport undertakings among others remain unaddressed. That said, several proposed clauses like higher fines for road offences were implemented by States that adopted CCTV technology to nab road accident offenders.

Inland waterways

If roads are the hub of present movement, inland waterways are where this government sees a lot of future action unfolding. Policy relaxations made last year are expected to push use of coasts to move more cargo not just within Indian ports but between India and neighbouring countries. Companies including Pepsico, IFFCO, Dabur have started using inland waterways last year. More cargo including coal, fertiliser, fly ash are using the waterways (river) and sea-mode. Several vehicle-makers have started using the water route to export vessels.

The Inland Waterway Authority of India has offered a special German design free to Indian ship-owners hoping that they invest in vessels that can ply on river Ganga. It is also opening terminals for private participation, apart from undertaking dredging to make waterways usable. Emphasis on processes in JN Port — such as putting RFID chip on export-import containers — upped the efficiency of the ports, improving India’s position in Ease on Doing Business Global Index. Now, other ports are following its footsteps.

(With inputs from Twesh Mishra)

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