Govt eyes shift to BOT as private cos show interest in roads sector
road projects on the build-operate-transfer (BOT) model by March 2024, giving a renewed push to the public-private partnership in road construction, road transport and highways minister Nitin Gadkari has said. This shift from the existing emphasis on engineering, procurement, and contract (EPC) model will drive private players to build better quality roads because they have to maintain them for 15 years, Gadkari told Yogima Seth Sharma, Deepshikha Sikarwar and Vinay Pandey in an interview. Edited excerpts:
How has the highways sector performed in the current fiscal?
Our budgetary allocation for current fiscal is ₹2.7 lakh crore and we expect to use all of it.
Our capex is on target. It was ₹49,000 crore around one-and-a-half month ago and must have touched ₹70,000 crore by now.
What is next on the agenda for the roads and highways sector? Private investment is still to kick in in a big way...
In the coming months till March 2024, we are looking to award ₹2 lakh crore worth of projects on build-operate-transfer (BOT) mode. We are restarting projects on BOT to encourage public-private partnership in road construction.
Health of the sector has improved tremendously. We have also made several policy interventions and some more minor policy tweaks could be taken up to make it more attractive for the private sector to invest. There is no apprehension in the private sector and the number of private players in the sector has gone up from 5 to 40 now.
Our focus now is on changes in use of fuels and converting roads into electric highways with electric buses and trucks plying on them.
