6 months ago
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The Centre plans to grant 10,000 kilometres of National Highway projects by the extremity of fiscal twelvemonth 2026, recovering from a slowdown that saw yearly awards driblet from 12,000 km to 6,000 km implicit the past 3 years, according to a elder authorities official.
The Ministry of Road Transport and Highways expects caller approvals to scope 10,000 km successful the existent fiscal year, which had dropped to 7,500 km successful fiscal twelvemonth 2024, and 6,000 km successful fiscal twelvemonth 2025 aft reaching 12,000 km successful fiscal twelvemonth 2023, Ministry of Road Transport and Highways Secretary V. Umashankar told journalists.
The authorities is besides assured of awarding projects covering 9,000 km retired of its people of 10,000 km arsenic its absorption remained connected archetypal awarding those projects that were sanctioned but not yet awarded. Around 4,500 km remained pending for award, retired of which 3,500 km person present been awarded, the authoritative explained.
Broadly connected track: official
In presumption of road construction, the authorities is again hopeful of reaching its people of 10,000 km this fiscal year. As of October 2025, 3,200 km of NH projects person been completed, compared with 3,700 km during the aforesaid play past year. Mr. Umashankar said the show was broadly connected track, noting that delayed monsoons had besides affected progress.
The apical authoritative explained that the grant of caller projects was delayed arsenic the authorities prioritised rolling retired pending projects from erstwhile years. Until April 2024, determination were 154 delayed projects that person dropped to nether 100 and are expected to further trim to astir 60 by the extremity of this fiscal year.
The authoritative explained that the authorities has taken respective steps to trim the clip taken betwixt approving a task and its day of commissioning, including requiring 90% of onshore acquisition to beryllium completed for those awarded successful Build, Operate, Transfer (BOT) and Hybrid Annuity Mode (HAM) to 90% connected the lines of projects awarded successful EPC mode (engineering, procurement and construction).
The timeline from support to acquisition is expected to shrink by a twelvemonth making the full process much efficient.
To a question connected whether the authorities expects its superior expenditure (capex) for the adjacent fiscal twelvemonth to trim due to the fact that of pending projects from erstwhile years, the authoritative said they were expecting to “catch up”.
Last year, a full 5,614 km of National Highways were constructed against the people of 5,150 km. The superior expenditure by National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) successful fiscal twelvemonth 2024-25 for improvement of nationalist road infrastructure reached an all-time precocious of implicit ₹2.5 lakh crore. In the Union Budget 2025-26, the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways (MoRTH) was allocated a full outlay of ₹2,87,333 crore. The capex constituent of this allocation was astir ₹2.72 lakh crore.
