Union minister Nitin Gadkari said on Saturday that the government is aiming for a 50-kilometre-per-day pace for national highway development in the country this fiscal year, with the expectation that the pace will be faster than in 2020-21. He said, “Now, we want to go up to (construct) 50 km per day (highway).”
Gadkari, speaking virtually at the ‘ET Global Business Summit,’ said the government is prioritising the development of the road network near the border districts of Arunachal Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, and Jammu & Kashmir.
In 2020-21, the country’s national highway (NH) building rate reached a new high of 37 kilometres per day. The minister of road transport and roads said this week that he had signed a file authorising the allocation of contracts for the building of a 1,000-kilometer expressway.
According to Gadkari, the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) and the National Highways and Infrastructure Development Corporation Ltd (NHIDCL) both had issues as a result of Covid-caused interruptions.
He also added, “But still for this (fiscal) year, up to the end of March, we will try to break the record of previous fiscal year’s highway construction.” At the same time, the minister stated that he aims to cut logistical costs. He also mentioned that logistics costs are currently 16% in India, 12% in China, 112% in the United States, and 10% in European nations.
