The Government’s initiative to provide cement at 50 per cent costs to both road builders and construction industry has been a runaway success. The online platform created by the Centre to bring cement manufactures and sellers under an umbrella to fight cartelisation by suppliers and mitigate overall costs incurred has been readily lapped up by buyers.
Within a month of its launch, INAM-PRO — the online marketplace — has managed to book orders of a lakh tonne, surpassing its initial monthly target. Ministry of Roads, Transport and Highways had launched the web portal on March 10 this year. Thirty-six cement manufacturers had committed to supplying 95 lakh tonnes through their 103 plants pan India at prices between Rs120-Rs180 a bag against a market price of Rs300- Rs360, a bag.
“So far, over 260 contractors have registered for Government projects and the order books have exceeded the offered quantities,” said Nitin Gadkari, Minister for Roads, Transport and Highways (MoRTH). Gadkari was speaking at the launch of Rajmarg —the e-magazine of the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) in Delhi.
“The orders so far, will result in savings upto Rs5,000 crore. We are looking at ways of saving on the building costs by introducing transparency in the transactions,” he said. Through an order issued in August 2014, the Ministry of roads and highways had decided to build concrete cement roads in place of traditional bitumen roads for better durability and zero-maintenance.
“Cement roads are cost-effective, have longer life and require almost zero- maintenance, particularly when compared to bitumen roads. But soon after the announcement, the cement makers pushed up their prices significantly, which was unfair,” said Gadkari.
“This on-line platform has already been received well and we have received several enquiries from companies, who want to be a part of the portal but at the moment we have restricted new entries as we have a commitment to the players who first joined us in our initiative,” said Sanjay Jaju, director, National Highways and Infrastructure Development Corporation limited, MoRTH.
“This online marketplace will bring in added transparency, encourage competition and end cartelization. We have started with cement and by the end of this month we will have hopefully overcome our initial glitches, and very soon we will to add other raw materials required for construction like steel and iron,” he said.