Increasing interest by private players in the highways sector has helped NHAI award 17 projects worth over Rs 25,500 crore in the last six months, leaving the authority richer by over Rs 17,000 crore in the form of premium.

Of the 17 projects, 12 were bagged by private firms at premium since April this year, a senior Road and Transport Ministry official told PTI.

Moreover, eight out of 12 projects, which bagged a premium of Rs 17,223 crore, were those in which the government had approved grants to developers but instead received premium from the parties, indicating the business potential.

The projects earlier awarded on premium include Ahmedabad-Vadodara, Beawar-Pali-Pindwara, Barwa-Adda-Panagarh and Kishangarh-Udaipur-Ahmedabad stretches.

Besides these, in case of four projects including Jabalpur-Katni-Rewa and Jabalpur-Lakhnadon, the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) has to pay less than approved grants, the official said.

All these projects will be built under National Highways Development Project (NHDP), the flagship road building programme of the Transport Ministry.

Under NHDP, the NHAI has developed about 16,000 km, while process for improvement of another 10,000 km is on. All seven phases of NHDP will cover upgradation of about 50,000 km of roads.

Highways developers bid for projects on a premium if they find it lucrative or the private companies are confident that the toll revenue accruing to them would be more than their total cost.

Earlier, NHAI virtually used to provide grants on schemes to road developers to make the projects viable.

NHAI has announced awarding of 59 projects - involving 7,994 km with a total cost of about Rs 60,000 crore - this fiscal.

India has a network of 4.1 million km roads out of which National Highways constitute only 71,772 km.

The National Highways though constitute only 1.7 per cent of the length, carry 40 per cent of the traffic on Indian roads. To augment it, the government plans to build 7,300 km of roads every year.

This translates into construction of 20 km of roads a day, which as per the Road Transport and Highways Minister Mr C P Joshi will be achieved by 2014.

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