Approvals delay halts award of road projects under EPC mode this fiscal
The road transport ministry’s plan to provide an impetus to the ailing road construction industry by awarding 4,000 km of road projects on Engineering Procurement and Contract (EPC) this fiscal is unlikely to happen due to delay in getting approvals for these projects.
A senior road transport ministry official said that the whole procedure of getting approvals is taking a lot more time than expected and is likely to hamper the plan of meeting the target of achieving the announced target.
“We are unlikely to meet our target of awarding 4,000 km of road projects in the current fiscal and the projects will then be awarded next year. We have only a few weeks of the current fiscal left and we have not moved much in terms of approval for these projects,” said the official, on condition of anonymity.
In an EPC project, the government funds the construction and the road developer only has to develop the road project in a stipulated period of time. Unlike the other forms of public-private partnership (PPP) projects, the road developer does not have to arrange funds for the project in an EPC projects.
The road transport ministry and the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) had announced a target of awarding 4,000 km of roads projects in the current fiscal.
The total cost of the project is estimated to be around Rs 24,000 crore to be carried out over a period of three to four years and around Rs 5,000 crore would have been required in the first
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