The ministry of road, transport and highways’ target of awarding 60 highway projects worth Rs 65,000 crore by the end of 2008 seems like a pipe dream. The National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) is yet to complete the technical evaluation of 30 of those projects worth over Rs 30,000 crore.
As per the model concession agreement for highway projects, prepared by the Planning Commission and endorsed by the Prime Minister’s committee on infrastructure in December 2008, technical evaluation is the first step in the bidding process, wherein bidders are short listed on the basis of experience and technical capability to implement the project. Thereafter, the top five or six bidders participate in the financial bidding.
?The delay in technical evaluation will only defer the projects. Since almost half the projects have not been technically evaluated, it’s a long way to go till the bids are actually awarded. In any case, the possibility of the projects to be bidded out by December this year is quite unlikely,? said a source.
?More so, nine of these projects have not yet got the approval of public-private partnership appraisal committee (PPPAC),? he added. PPPAC had to approve nine projects under phase 5 of National Highways Development Programme (NHDP) by mid November.
?The evaluation process is going on and we expect the process of awarding the bids to be over by December this year,? said an NHAI official.
In normal circumstances, the technical evaluation is done within one month to 90 days time. It sometimes takes longer as the process involves consultations from external agencies in addition to technical experts in NHAI.
However, the 60 projects were announced by the NHAI in September this year. Apart from technical evaluation and subsequent financial bidding by the short listed companies, a major task is land acquisition from the states.
?Awarding the projects is a long-drawn process. Normally it should be done in five to seven months time. But NHAI is on average taking a year-and-a-half to approve the projects. As two months have already lapsed since these projects were announced and technical evaluation has not yet been done, they will obviously be delayed,? said the source.