In an interview to Bloomberg TV India, Roads Secretary Vijay Chibber says the target of building 30 km of roads per day in 2016 is a little ambitious.

How feasible is the target of building 30 km of roads per day?

The 30 km is not a figure that cannot be achieved. But my hesitation there is — let’s not be so fixated about “this so many kilometres per day”. Even this year, we are awarding about 10,000 km. Last year, we awarded about 8,000 km. So, 8,000 km itself is little more than 22 km a day and with 10,000 km we would be touching something like 28 km a day. And each of these projects is expected to get completed three years down the line.

So, our focus has to really remain on a more sustained programme, 8,000-10,000 km-plus every year and start bringing the focus back on the qualitative aspect and the road safety aspects. One of the problems with the PPP and the BOT model was that we were degrading the qualitative aspects of the project, particularly from the road safety perspective, to make the projects financially viable.

This is not a great idea because eventually at some point in time subsequent to the completion of the projects, you have to rebuild the features and that is a more expensive way of doing things.

It is also sending a wrong message to the society at large that we are making substandard roads. So, what we have done this year, which has not caught the attention, is that we have got the quality aspects back.

I believe you met with concessioners and NHAI. Tell us a little about that.

I think what you are referring to is the last engagement where the NHAI was tasked to look at all the 77 projects, which were in a way languishing when this government came to office.

And we found 19 of them still in some manner or the other struggling. We had to convey the message that the industry’s wish list have been met very substantially by the government. The mindset that a contract is imbedded in stone, that is not there. The government has done a lot. It’s now for the concessionaire to get on with it.

Bankers realised they had been taken for a ride in some cases. They need to tighten up their internal processes and procedures to monitor the transfer of funds from out of the escrow and make sure it goes to the project and not diverted for alternative projects or investments. We are also signalling that there is a limit to patience.

The people of India are not going to wait endlessly just because it is a PPP project. Mind you these are toll projects.

Related Topics