Union Minister for Road, Transport and Highways Nitin Gadkari has come hard on the cement industry for indulging in ‘cartelisation’. Blaming the “cartel” for pushing up costs of cements in the wake of the Centre announcing new projects, Gadkari said he would seek Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s intervention in the issue.
“Every company has a right to make profit but there should not be any kind of exaggerated exploitation,” said Gadkari, speaking at the CII conference on Wednesday. “The cement industry indulging in cartelisation, makes a huge difference to the production and marketing cost. We have decided to build concrete roads and we want that the cost of construction should remain low,” he said.
Even in July last year, when Gadkari met top cement manufacturers, he warned them against forming cartels. Gadkari said he would not tolerate cement companies limiting and controlling supplies in the market and determining prices through an anti-competitive agreement.
Gadkari emphasised on the need for reducing project costs and called for positive participation from the industry. He also said that he was holding onto cement projects worth at least Rs3,00,000 crore and would give them a go-ahead, if the cement companies stopped cartelisation.
“We want to reduce the cost of the project and if we want to do that then we have to reduce the cost of material used for the project,” he said. Gadkari also hinted at the urgent need to rework and form the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI).
“A lot of changes are required to be made in NHAI, we need to revamp it. We have to bring in more transparency, make decision making time-bound and we need to make these efforts to make the sector grow,” he said.
Gadkari said that since there were a lot of complaints on the lack of transparency and adhocism in the NHAI, his ministry is studying a proposal to restructure and modernize the authority. “last time, the restructuring at NHAI took place in 2009 to enhance its institutional capacity. But thereafter it has stagnated,” said Gadkari.
“It was revamped to make it a multi-disciplinary professional body with quality financial management and contract management expertise. Its need to be redesigned to make it more transparent and accessible,” he said.