Goal 20 km/day. Built 6. The highway story meanders

The 20-km-a-day highway construction target set by Kamal Nath three years back remains a distant milepost.

The achievement on the ground has been just 2,250 km in all of last financial year, or 6.16 km a day.

The road ministry’s best show was in 2009-10, when it built 2,693 km of national highways at 7.37 km a day. But this fell to 1,784 km, or 4.88 km a day, the following fiscal.

The government still blames the global economic crisis for the failure to achieve the daily construction target, three and a half years after ripples of the subprime crisis were felt.

“We have to have a certain amount of work in progress in order to achieve this target. There have been backlogs during the economic slowdown years, which have led to this scenario,” CP Joshi, the surface transport minister, told DNA.

The government has constructed a mere 6,727 km in the last three years and must complete at least 29,700 km by 2014 to get near the targeted daily average. The asking rate will be 40.41 km a day.

A back-of-the envelope calculation shows that work in progress of 81,000 km will be required to complete the targeted annual average in the next two years.

The ministry, however, seems content with a modest 8,800 km target set for this financial year.

“In 2011-12, we have awarded road length of 7,957 km against a target of 7,300 km, a jump of 54% over the previous best of 5,058 km in 2010-11. This financial year, we are looking at awarding 8,800 km,” said Joshi.

For the record, the 7,957 km awarded till March is a combined achievement of the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways and the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI). NHAI awarded around 6,500 km as against its target of 7,300 km.