At the heart of his criticism is the delay in decision making and a lack of monitoring. Some officials, however, blamed the delays on overambitious contractors.
If 4,000 workers could work round the clock for the construction of the new Parliament building, then there is no reason why all infrastructure projects too cannot follow that model, asserts Dr Sudhir Bisht.
Switching off the engine affects the vehicle's braking ability and this possibly resulted in the truck hitting other vehicles on the bridge slope on Sunday, as per a probe conducted into the accident by the Regional Transport Office (RTO), he said.
With the bodies of all the missing workers recovered, the two-day rescue operation ended late on Saturday evening.
Roads are becoming smarter even if the people driving on it are not. A set of smart technologies is making construction, maintenance, and traffic management much more efficient.
Gadkari said the NHAI was working on setting up an InvIT to monetise its projects for mobilising resources through capital markets.
Union Road Transport and Highways Minister Nitin Gadkari on Wednesday pitched for formulating a policy for using the Reserve Bank of India's rising foreign exchange reserves for funding road projects, saying the country needs low cost finance for such infrastructure projects. Addressing a virtual event organised by industry body CII, Gadkari further said that the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) should also have a financial arm like the power ministry's Power Finance Corporation (PFC). "We have a surplus of dollar reserves in the country. I have decided to talk with the RBI Governor, about how we can formulate a policy by which we can use this foreign exchange reserves for development of infrastructure in the country," he said.
Infrastructure assets worth over Rs 1.62 lakh crore are expected to be monetised during the current fiscal, Parliament was informed on Monday. The government had last year announced a Rs 6 lakh crore National Monetisation Pipeline (NMP) to unlock value in infrastructure assets across sectors, ranging from power to road and railways in four years till 2025. In a written reply to the Lok Sabha, Minister of State for Finance Pankaj Chaudhary said about Rs 97,000 crore worth of public assets were monetised in the last fiscal (2021-22).
Union Minister for Road, Transport and Highway Nitin Gadkari on Thursday said his ministry can address the water woes faced in parts of the country.
Only NIIF has stayed the course as a viable infrastructure financing institution.
Maharashtra Congress leader and former Lok Sabha MP Milind Deora has demanded a Central Bureau of Investigation probe into Rs 12,000 crore spent by Mumbai's civic body on road works between 2017 and 2022.
The letter shared with the media on Saturday comes amid Maharashtra losing several big-ticket projects to neighbouring Gujarat.
As even bigger road construction players are not willing to bet on BOT projects., NHAI will have to rethink its thrust on the BOT model.
The 100-km stretch of Mumbai-Ahmedabad highway claimed at least 62 lives.
"I am shocked why it was not followed. This is even there in the manual of the Indian Road Congress. Had that been followed then there would have been no casualties. There have been gross violations," Maitra said.
Moody's Investors Service on Wednesday raised the rating outlook for 18 Indian corporates and banks, including Reliance Industries, Infosys, SBI and Axis Bank, to 'stable' from 'negative'. This follows the upgrade by the US-based rating agency in India's sovereign rating outlook to 'stable' from 'negative' on Tuesday. The agency had affirmed the sovereign rating at 'Baa3'.
FASTag is a prepaid tag, affixed on vehicle's windscreen, that enables automatic deduction of toll charges and lets the vehicle pass through the toll plaza without stopping for the cash transaction.
If 2019-20 (FY20) was an unusual year for highway construction in India, with the pace of work slowing down for the first time since the Narendra Modi government assumed power in 2014, largely due to the general elections in May and liquidity crunch, the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020-21 (FY21) only made matters worse with lockdowns and labour unavailability. The pace of highway construction in 2021-22 (FY22) has not been able to bulldoze the pandemic barriers in a year marred by two Covid-19 waves - the second at the start of the fiscal year, the third towards the close. With localised lockdowns and restrictions on mobility, highway construction growth in the country has now fallen to a five-year low.
The company on Monday said, in a communication to the stock exchanges, that it had terminated an agreement it had with the National Highways Authority of India.
Road construction witnessed a near 60 per cent year-on-year jump in the first two months of financial year 2021-22 (FY22), despite restrictions being imposed in the wake of the second wave of Covid-19. Around 1,470 km of roads were constructed during the first two months of the current fiscal, as against 847 km in the corresponding period last year, according to official figures. However, these are provisional numbers as the state public works departments of Maharashtra and Goa are yet to provide data.
Expressing commitment to augment the country's infrastructure, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Monday proposed to significantly enhance capital expenditure to Rs 5.54 lakh crore in the next fiscal, besides creating institutional structures and giving a big thrust to monetizing assets to achieve the goals of the National Infrastructure Pipeline (NIP). Sitharaman said NIP, that was launched in December 2019 with 6,835 projects, has now been expanded to 7,400 projects and around 217 projects worth Rs 1.10 lakh crore under some key infrastructure ministries have been completed. "For 2021-22, I propose a sharp increase in capital expenditure and thus have provided Rs 5.54 lakh crores which is 34.5% more than the BE of 2020-21," the finance minister said.
NHAI has already initiated process to handle such emergency situation and also taking all possible measures to avoid such incidents in future, an official statement said on Sunday.
Industry players, who do not want to come on record, say this state of affairs is hampering NHAI's functioning.
NHAI to pull plug on Rs 3,000-crore ventures for poor show
The government began the selection process a year earlier and has twice gone through the process of short-listing candidates.
Over the years, NHAI's expenses have spiraled due to sharp increase in land acquisition costs, while budgetary support has shrunk, leading it to fall back on internal resources and market borrowings
Senior government officials said the company would be allowed a harmonious exit.
Anil Rego, CEO, Right Horizons, answers your personal income tax queries.
The Centre's ambitious Rs 6-trillion National Monetisation Pipeline (NMP) could fall short of yearly targets for the current fiscal year (FY22) and the next one as well (FY23), partly due to the long gestation period in monetising big-ticket railway infrastructure, Business Standard has learnt from sources in the finance and rail ministries. Officials say the major chunk of railway monetisation will happen from FY24 onwards because leasing some of the infrastructure, like stadiums and dedicated freight corridor, will not happen anytime soon. Rail infra is expected to be the second-biggest contributor to the NMP, with about Rs 1.52 trillion worth of assets to be monetised.
NHAI to pay only Rs 175-200 cr as it takes over from concessionaire
To centralise process by setting up special units in each state.
Fintech giant Paytm claimed it is selling more FASTags than all the banks put together on a daily basis.
World Bank customarily withdraws fund for a project that has not been built in seven years.
Few big ticket road projects will be fast-tracked soon.
At present, Road Secretary R S Gujral is handling the additional charge of NHAI chairman, the position which has been vacated by Brijeshwar Singh, for three months.
The Centre has accorded top priority for cost-effective, pollution-free transportation modes, such as waterways, which reduce logistic costs and increase road safety. Union minister of roads, highways, ports and shipping Nitin Gadkari speaks to Sanjay Jog about the government's strategy.
NHAI expected to be debt-free by 2030-31 and added the authority, which raised about Rs 14 billion (Rs 1,400 crore) in 2009-10 through capital gains tax exemption bonds, planned to mobilise Rs 40 billion (Rs 4,000 crore) in the current financial year.
Cabinet to take up proposal to extend operation & maintenance contracts from 9 to 29 years
The time taken in land acquisition has been drastically brought down to 12 months from 24 months earlier.
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