MoRTH targets 25,000 km length for fiscal

In order to match its ambitious road building targets, Ministry of Road Transport and Highways has set an astounding target of 25,000 km in the current fiscal of which 15,000 km is to be awarded by the National Highway Authority of India (NHAI) and 10,000 km through National Highways & Infrastructure Development Corporation Limited (NHIDCL). The targets have been hiked in view of the significant rising rate of execution of road construction in the recent past, on account of speedy clearances and availability of clear work front to the developers. The target set is of constructing 41 km of national highways per day in 2016-17, up from 16.6 km per day of highways built in 2015-16. This became possible due to a slew of measures taken by the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways (MoRTH) to revive stressed projects and even to execute new road projects. During the first quarter of this fiscal, the rate of highway construction was 22 km per day. The number of stalled projects came down from 384 in FY 2014 to 19 by the end of the last financial year and there are plans to resolve all the remaining projects by December 2016, said official sources.