Road transport and highways ministry expects to award five mega road projects worth Rs 15,000 crore by March, 2011. National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) has already invited bids for 570-km project from Kishangarh near Jaipur to Ahmedabad via Udaipur, first in the series of mega projects.
?We would be awarding five mega road projects in the next 3-4 months. They would cost around Rs 15,000 crore,? road transport and highways minister Kamal Nath said here on Tuesday. Till now, the ministry has identified ten stretches that would be developed in one go. At present, the ministry follows the model of constructing roads in parts that leads to high expenditures in most cases.
The government targets to construct 35,000 km of highways in five years under the National Highways Development Programme (NHDP). This would require an estimated investment of about $60 billion (around 2.75 lakh crore), of which $40 billion (Rs 1.83 lakh crore) is expected to come from the private sector.
