NHAI targets to award highway projects worth ₹72,000 cr in Q4

The union transport ministry has planned bids for national highways of around ₹72,000 crore, covering over 2,600 km, to be awarded by the end of this quarter. The fourth quarter highway project pipeline of the ministry will give a boost to the process of awarding projects in the current financial year.

Bids for over 77 projects are in the different stages of tendering. While some of the bids have already been opened, the NHAI will open the remaining bids soon and will award all the projects after that. The total capital cost of these projects is ₹71,891 crore.

Most of the projects will be taken up under the hybrid annuity model (HAM), while others will be taken up on engineering procurement and construction (EPC) contract basis. Two projects will be taken on build operate and transfer, BoT (Toll) - the public-private partnership model that has been lying defunct for close to a decade now. The 55% of highway projects in the tendering pipeline will be awarded on HAM basis and 35% will be awarded on EPC mode. HAM and EPC are the construction model in which traffic risk and capital cost are borne by the government.