A road regulator will be in place before the next Budget session, Minister of Road Transport and Highways Minister Oscar Fernandes said on the sidelines of an event here on Monday.
The regulator will look at the entire gamut of issues involved in the highways sector for projects to be undertaken on public-private partnership (PPP) basis. These involve renegotiation of contracts that the Government has already entered into with highway developers and tolls to be charged from users.
Among all infrastructure sectors in country, the road sector has the maximum number of projects implemented on PPP basis.
Earlier, a Roads Ministry official had said that the terms of reference of the regulator would include issues such as dispute resolution policy, premium rescheduling, exit options and default in spending money on operations and maintenance of highways that have already been awarded to developers. The regulator will also look at the tariff policy, which is basically the level of tolls being charged to users.
The regulator may be put in place through an executive order and subsequently through a parliament nod, the official had said.
In the Budget this year, Finance Minister P. Chidambaram had announced setting up of a regulator in the road sector.
Incidentally, a committee headed by the Prime Minister’s Economic Advisory Council Chairman C. Rangarajan is also looking at a proposal to permit highway project developers to postpone their premium payments. The committee report is expected in about a month.
Meanwhile, in a related move, Planning Commission member B.K. Chaturvedi said that the Government would have to look at the engineering procurement contract mode of project award to build roads given that the private sector was not responding to bids for projects on PPP basis.