Government to award 100 highway projects in the next fiscal

The Union ministry for surface transport plans to put 100 highway projects up for bidding in the next fiscal, which will connect 11,000 km and require an investment of over Rs100,000 crore.

That will be more than twice what was awarded in a public-private partnership basis this fiscal — 44 national highway projects traversing 4,425 kms and requiring an investment of Rs40,000 crore.

The current year’s performance in itself is 31% more than the 3,360km paved in financial year 2009-10, worth RS33,300 crore.

The 100 projects are part of Phase III (four-laning) and Phase V (six-laning) of the National Highways Development Programme (NHDP) and the geographies for this have been been tentatively identified, the sources said.

The target looks a little ambitious, analysts said, as the transport ministry has not been able to award more than 50 projects annually in the last two years.
But surface transport minister C P Joshi remains confident.

“It is not a question of number of projects that we take up. The idea is to award at least 7000km of highway projects annually irrespective of the number of projects, which would certainly be scaled up later,” Joshi told DNA.

The government, meanwhile, is getting its act together to deliver on the tendering targets set up for the current financial year.

Measures such as e-tendering and e-procurement as well as one-time annual pre-qualification have been initiated to fast-track the procedure.
In line with the plans, the government plans to conduct workshops on the new electronic procedures.

A ministry official said, “We have plans to initiate workshops for all stakeholders such as concessionaires, consultants, independent engineers, and suppliers, among others.”

The government, through the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI), has also called for request for annual qualification (RFAQ), which is open till April 22.

An RFAQ enables companies to get shortlisted for a particular price-bracket (of projects) once in a year, thereby saving time in subsequent biddings.

The score of the annual qualification will be valid till December this year, or till any particular date the NHAI wishes to extend it to.

It will be valid for projects involving upgrade to two-laning, four-laning as well as six-laning of highways.
Bidding for national highway upgrade projects is a two-tier process.

In the first round, request for qualification, bidders are short listed on basis of their technical capability to implement the projects.

Subsequently, the shortlisted bidders participate in the financial bidding round. The new norms essentially mean that those shortlisted in the annual technical qualification need not provide elaborate details at the time of project-specific bidding.