Delivering a lecture on privatisation of road projects, organised by the Indian Roads and Transport Development Association (southern region), he said the Union government had estimated that road development plans identified by it would call for a capital outlay of around Rs 120,000 crore ($28 billion) over a 10-year period. However, the present outlay for maintaining and developing the road sector is only Rs 5,000 crore, constituting a little over 40 per cent of the total requirement.

The government as part of the road development plans had proposed to develop National Highways (NH)-the north-south, east-west corridor and connectivity to ports and other important production centres totalling 14,000 km carrying an outlay of Rs 54,000 crore. Under State Highways (SH), the government had plans to upgrade 50 per cent of the existing network of 1,10,000 km calling for infusion of funds to the extent of Rs 60,000 crore to Rs 70,000 crore.

In spite of being well connected with 50,000 km of NH, 110,000 km of SH and 150,000 km of other roads such as major district roads (MDR) and other district roads (ODR), Ganguly said the general feeling was that more roads were needed. The reason, he said, was because of deficiency in the quality of roads in terms of capacity, rideability and safety leading to poor usage levels in the country. In India, the usage level is estimated on an average at 200-250 km per day as against the international average of 550-600 km per day.