Toll charges on national highways will be rationalised, Nitin Gadkari, Minister of Road Transport and Highways, said at the Economic Editors’ Conference here.
Incidentally, to deal with the traffic chaos following demonetisation of ₹500/1,000 notes, no toll is being charged at plazas on the national highways at present.
Confirming the Minister’s statement, sources said a proposal is in the works although nothing is planned immediately.
Earlier, the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) Chairman Raghav Chandra had told
“Bitumen prices have been coming down, particularly in the last few months. For many months, the prices were not coming down, as a result of which the demand had not gone up. But, now in sync with international crude prices, bitumen prices are coming down,” said an official.
Bitumen is a bye-product of oil production, and the taxes on bitumen are not as high as those on retail prices and its prices can account for about 20 per cent of a road project costs, though this varies.
Responding to queries on the need to do away with toll charges, Gadkari made it clear that while people will have to pay some user charges, he was concerned with toll being charged on low-quality roads.
The drop in construction prices is also coming a a time when the government is focussing more on engineering procurement contracts as against public-private partnership contracts. “We are focussing more on EPC contracts. Though, we are trying to go for hybrid annuity model as well,” he said.
Port infrastructure Gadkari said that to increase the containerisation, the Shipping Ministry is working on developing the Kolachel port as a transhipment hub. Incidentally, as a part improving logistics, the Ministry has also worked out an IT system that will allow trucks to obtain a time of entry to gates at different ports and accordingly enter. This will prevent trucks from gathering outside the ports. The pilot is ready at JN Port, said sources. The JN Port has registered a profit of ₹1,300 crore this fiscal against ₹1,000 crore last year, Gadkari said.
He said the Mumbai Port was emerging as a cruise terminal and has witnessed a jump in cruise ships calling at the port.