Union Minister for Road Transport, Highways and Shipping Nitin Gadkari will be flying to Japan next month to take forward talks on investing in roads and highways in India. Gadkari will also hold talks with Japan Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. “We have been extended an invitation from their Government to take forward our talks on investing in roads and highways in India. Even the past, they have been active partners in our infrastructure growth story and we are hoping for a positive response even this time,” said Nitin Gadkari. He was speaking at the launch of an e-magazine of the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) —’Rajmarg’ in Delhi on Tuesday.
“We are also in talks with US and Canadian governments to get them to invest their pension funds in infrastructure here. loans are available at low interest rates globally, and we need to capture that for our infra-growth here,” he said. Gadkari, however, clarified that his Ministry was not short of funds and had surplus even for the near future. However, this is no secret that the ministry has been talking of raising funds from abroad for up-scaling their infrastructure projects.
“The last five years have been rough for the infrastructure sector as the private participation in projects almost dried up for want of funds, which led the government to dole out projects in the EPC (Equipment, Procurement, Construction) mode, where the government bears the agreed cost of construction,” said a senior official from MoRTH. “The interest has picked up but to meet the construction targets we will need a lot of funding,” he said.
It is estimated that the government needs at least Rs. two trillion to fund 20,000km of road construction under the National Highways Development Project over the coming five years. last Sunday, a team of officials from the ministry of roads and highways met at Kuala lumpur in Malaysia to meet senior officers and construction majors, after the latter expressed interest in funding infrastructure projects through the newly developed hybrid annuity model, where the investor and the Indian Government share the building costs.
The budget allocation for the Ministry of Roads and Highways saw a 48 per cent hike from the previous financial year. The budget saw a significant increase to Rs42,913 crore for the year 2015-16 from Rs28,881 crore in