In contrast to the lull in 2008, road-rollers and wheel loaders returned to action across the country as the government awarded highway projects worth Rs 20,000 crore (Rs 200 billion) in 2009 that saw Mumbai get India's first and longest open sea cable-stayed bridge.
Last year, highways regulator -- National Highways Authority of India-- failed to attract bidders for more than 80 per cent of its projects, citing global economic meltdown playing spoilsport. With a spurt in economic activity, Transport Ministry geared to float bids for another 24 projects by the end of the fiscal and is confident of getting a robust response, said an official.
The developments in the sector took place in the backdrop of change of guard at the ministry in May this year, which formed an aggressive workplan of awarding 12,000 km of roads with an investment of Rs one lakh crore under the National Highways Development Programme.
Again, the NHAI has a workplan of awarding an equal length of roads for development for fiscal 2010-11 with an investment of Rs three lakh crore, Transport Minister Kamal Nath recently said.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh appointed a committee headed by Planning Commission Member B K Chaturvedi in the second half of the year to recommend ways and means for expediting highways projects especially projects under PPP mode.
The Cabinet Committee on Infrastructure had recently accepted the Chaturvedi Committee recommendations, including lowering of technical experience required by companies to bid for road projects and changes in the agreement with the developers.
The year also saw the government allowing company bidding for a road project to hold up to 25 per cent stake in a firm bidding for another project from 5 per cent earlier.
An expressways network for the country also seems to be on the cards with the government forming a master plan for its ambitious project of constructing 18,650-km long expressways network at an investment of Rs 3.35 lakh crore (Rs 3.35 trillion), excluding land acquisition costs.
Nath had said he was expediting the process of setting up the Expressways Authority of India, which would look exclusively at the requirements of building roads to facilitate non-stop high-speed movement of traffic.
The minister has also revealed his plans to award 10 'mega projects'-- building roads that are more than 400 km long-- worth Rs 45,000 crore (Rs 450 billion)over the next two years.
These projects covering 4,000 km will be awarded on a revenue-share basis, under which the developers would pay a part of the toll earnings to the government.
The NHAI has already asked potential bidders to submit their initial 'request for qualification'(RFQ) documents for two of these 10 projects spread over Rajasthan, Gujarat and Andhra Pradesh.
Besides the massive plans for road development in the country, the government also intends to roll out hi-tech, automatic systems at toll plazas for non-manual, cashless tax collection.
According to the latest information, the pilots of these projects would be made operational on Panipat-Jalandhar, Surat-Dahisar and Gurgaon-Kathputli highway stretches and then gradually rolled out across the nation.
To give shape to these ambitious plans, the Budget 2009-10 saw an increased allocation of Rs 4,140.55 crore (Rs 41.40 billion)for developing national highways in the country, besides those built by the NHAI.
The budget also announced raising the allocation for NHAI by 23 per cent for the National Highways Development Project over 2008-09.
The allocation for NHDP was also increased to Rs 8,578.45 crore (Rs 85.78 billion) over Rs 6,972.47 crore (Rs 69.72 billion)in 2008-09
Apart from budgetary allocations, a $3-billion loan from the World Bank is on the anvil, Transport minister Nath had said after his meeting with the World Bank President Robert Zoellick, who was in the country earlier this month.
He also added that the World Bank had agreed to raise its funding commitment for the highways projects.
The government further plans to seek another $2 billion loan from the international lender soon for road projects spread over the next 3-4 years.
