Highway build hit second-highest peak in FY24 but misses target by a mile
₹2.64 trillion provided in the budget. Officials said that capex spending of MoRTH has remained over 90% level in previous five years and in fact above 98% in three of the five years with the exception of FY20 when it was 91% and FY22 when it stayed at 93%.
Officials said that going forward the expectation is that in the current fiscal entire (100%) capex of ₹2.72 trillion provided in FY25 would be spent to build highways. Officials also said that FY24 signalled a revival of private sector investment in highways with companies pitching in with around ₹35,000 crore investment, taking the overall capex spent to over ₹3 trillion.
Along with construction, highway awards also picked momentum in the last quarter of the last fiscal taking total awards to 8,581 km. Officials said that the general elections will not slow down construction as there was a big pipeline of projects that should ensure roadworks will remain closer to FY24 levels in FY25.
Officials said they were targetting 12,000-13,000 km a year over the next decade after which overall construction may slow down a bit as most highways required in the country would have been built and the focus would shift to maintenance of new alignments. Under the Vision 2047 plan, MoRTH is targeting to construct 50,000 km of access-controlled highways that according to officials would add more lane-km to the network as most of these would be 4-8 lane networks.Milestone Alert!
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