national highway: Govt targeting construction pace of 50 km/day for NH

Union minister Nitin Gadkari on Saturday said the government is targeting a pace of 50 km per day for national highways’ construction in the country, and expressed hope that the pace in the current fiscal year will be higher than that in 2020-21. Addressing ‘ET Global Business Summit’ virtually, Gadkari said the government is giving highest priority to developing the road network near the border areas of Arunachal Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh and Jammu & Kashmir.

“Now, we want to go up to (construct) 50 km per day (highway),” he said.

The pace of national highway (NH) construction in the country touched a record 37 km per day in 2020-21.

The road transport and highways minister said, this week he has signed a file to award contracts for construction of 1,000 km highway.

Gadkari said due to COVID-induced disruptions, National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) and National Highways and Infrastructure Development Corporation Ltd (NHIDCL) faced some problems.

“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,” he said.

The minister said, at the same time, his mission is to reduce the logistics costs.

He pointed out that presently the logistics cost in India is 16 per cent, China (12 per cent), the US (112 per cent), and in European countries, it is 10 per cent.