The Road Ministry is working on ranking highways on green parameters, a top Road Ministry official said while speaking at a PHDCCI virtual conference recently.

Transport Minister Nitin Gadkari said the Ministry is working on use of alternative materials such as coir and jute carpets, plastic, rubber and recycled bitumen for constructing roads.

Apart from contributing to improving ecology, use of such material will also help companies in the backdrop of soaring raw material prices of products such as steel and cement, which the Minister alleged has increased due to cartelisation. Gadkari mentioned the need for companies to work with right level of profits. In a subsequent CII conference on lowering the cost of logistics, an official said that a steel maker told him that India’s steel is competitive within the factory, but gets uncompetitive due to logistics costs.

Tree transplantation

Pointing out that tree transplantation is likely to emerge as a huge business (in the backdrop of infrastructures being built that requires cutting trees), Gadkari said that he would like to ready 1,000 contractors in the tree transplantation space.

IK Pandey, Director General, Road Ministry, said they are working on Codes for Green ranking of highways and that the Ministry is requesting the road developer to use modified polymer bitumens which would be economical in the long run. The Ministry has made this mandatory in Southern States including Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Kerala.

Safe, green highways

Gadkari added that they have tied up with World Bank to build safe and green national highway corridors in the states of Rajasthan, Himachal Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, and Andhra Pradesh. The project will enhance the capacity of highways in the mainstream, safety, and green technologies.

Pandey added that they are rectifying all black spots (accident prone spots) by this September, and permanently make those changes by December.

Also, Gadkari reiterated that he is confident about the Road Ministry achieving a target of building 40 km of national highways a day in this financial year.

Aggressive bidding?

In another move, Sudhir Hoshing from IRB Infrastructure, a road construction and developing company, indicated that there is an aggressive bidding in the highways sector now in the backdrop of changed bidding norms that permit more contractors to participate to make the sector inclusive. Even in hybrid annuity model projects, an equity of 18-20 per cent is required and there is no bar on the number of projects that a company can bag. The quantum of money required to be put as equity should not become challenging (for bidders) and “(we hope) we do not see a time when the successful bidders are unable to complete projects,” said Hoshing.

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