A record of constructing 37-km of road per day
The Road Transport Ministry is setting up a committee under the chairmanship of K. Venkataramanan to reduce the dependency on steel and cement to reduce the cost of construction and look for alternatives.
All steel, whether produced from ore, billets, pellets, or melting of scrap, would be allowed to be used for National Highway construction, as long as it meets the standards required for specific grades of steel, he said.
“The steel proposed to be used would be tested in NABL-accredited laboratories as a third-party check before approval,” the Minister said on 23 April 2021.
The ministry has managed to achieve three world records recently. “Firstly, we have managed to achieve a record by constructing 37-km of road per day during 2020-21. Secondly, the construction of a 2.5-km four-lane concrete road was achieved in a matter of 24 hours. Our ministry also achieved a record by constructing a 26-km one-lane road in 24 hours flat. This is due to the efforts put by our engineers, contractors, and workers,” he said.
The Ministry has constructed 13,327 KM of National Highways up to March 2021 as compared to 10,237 Km in March 2020. “The award figure is 10,965-km during this period as compared to 8,948-km in the previous year. This kind of performance was never done earlier,” he informed.
Vineet Agarwal, President, ASSOCHAM, stated that the complexities of infrastructure development need to be understood to ensure that the supporting frameworks are effective.
“Lack of infrastructure is the primary growth constraint and government looks to the private sector to partner in developing the same. Designing effective co-working models between the public and private sectors would be a step towards efficient delivery,” he said.
Sharing his perspective, ASSOCHAM Secretary General Deepak Sood explained that the highways sector in India has been at the forefront of performance and innovation and the government has successfully rolled out several projects on the Hybrid Annuity Model (HAM) for building National Highways to speed up the construction of roads in the country by renewing interest of private developers.
“Public-Private-Partnership (PPP) and Build Operate and Transfer (BOT) model is attracting the interest of growing thrust towards privatization and private sector participation in the development of public infrastructure projects in India,” he said.
ASSOCHAM Past-President Balkrishan Goenka highlighted that the government has given relief to PPP-Toll projects by giving extra time for Toll collection due to pandemic.
“However, for HAM projects, the only way to compensate for the losses due to the pandemic is to compensate for the cost incurred for interest during construction. A request is that interest on debt amounts outstanding at the beginning of March 2020 be compensated at the MCLR plus 1.25 for a period of 6 months,” said Goenka, who is the Chairman of Welspun Group. #tenders #construction #investment #banking #projects #contracts /fiinews.com
