Armed with permission to issue Rs 10,000 crore (Rs 100 billion) of tax-free bonds in 2011-12, the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) will issue the first lot worth Rs 2,500 crore by mid-May.
NHAI had earlier planned to go for private placement in order to raise funds faster but later decided to go in for the public issue due to the prevailing interest rate scenario.
The government needs about Rs 3.31 lakh crore (Rs 3.31 trillion) to meet its target of developing 35,000 kms of national highways over the next five years.
rediffGURU T S Khurana answers readers' personal income tax queries.
Union Minister Nitin Gadkari inaugurated a 418 feet national flag, the tallest in the country, at the Attari-Wagah border in Punjab's Amritsar district.
While activity in the highway segment has been slow, the bid pipeline saw recovery in January 2024, and awards are expected to improve in Q4FY24. The national highway (NH) bid pipeline has recovered from a low of Rs 15,900 crore in December 2023 to Rs 68,400 crore at present. The NHAI's pipeline stands at Rs 66,100 crore, with hybrid annuity model (HAM), build operate transfer (BOT) and engineering procurement and construction (EPC) projects accounting for 60 per cent, 29 per cent and 13 per cent share, respectively.
The National Payments Corporation of India on Thursday granted approval to Paytm-owner One97 Communications Ltd to participate in UPI as a Third-Party Application Provider (TPAP) under the multi-bank model. Axis Bank, HDFC Bank, State Bank of India, and YES Bank will act as Payment System Provider (PSP) banks to Paytm.
Rat-hole mining may be illegal but the talent and experience of rat-hole miners were used in the rescue operation to save the 41 workers trapped in the Silkyara tunnel, a National Disaster Management Authority member said on Tuesday.
The economic reforms started by Singh as the finance minister in 1991 gave a new direction to India as it ushered in a liberal economy, Gadkari said.
According to experts, slopes in Himachal have become highly vulnerable to landslides due to cutting of rocks at the foothills and the lack of proper drainage system, and high intensity rainfall is making the things worse for the state.
'The revenue projection arises out of all sectors doing well and the formalisation of the economy helps in making sure the tax domain gets widened.'
Machinery and manpower have been deployed, but stones falling from the hills are obstructing the road opening work, the officials said.
Union Minister Nitin Gadkari on Thursday said the government will approach the capital market this month to raise funds for road projects. Addressing an event, he said toll revenue of the NHAI will soar to Rs 1.40 lakh crore per annum in next three years from Rs 40,000 crore per annum currently. "This month, I will be approaching the capital market to raise funds for road projects...Our toll income is very good and NHAI's rating is AAA...I am 100 per cent sure that we will get a good response from the capital market," the Road Transport and Highways minister said.
Capital expenditure by 54 large central public sector enterprises and five departmental arms, having a capex minimum target of Rs 100 crore, rose 93 per cent year-on-year (YoY) in the April-May period to Rs 1.39 trillion. The National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) and the Railways have started this financial year's capex cycle on a stronger note. In the first two months of FY24, the 54 CPSEs, along with the departmental arms, achieved 19 per cent of their combined budget target of Rs 7.33 trillion, Business Standard has learnt.
State-owned NHAI has created a Guinness World Record for the longest continuously laid bituminous lane of 75 kilometres in 105 hours and 33 minutes on the national highway between Amravati and Akola districts in Maharashtra. Mentioning about the record, Road Transport and Highways Minister Nitin Gadkari on Wednesday said the project was implemented by 720 workers including a team of independent consultants who worked day and night. The total length of the 75 kilometres of single lane continuous bituminous concrete road is equivalent to 37.5 kilometres of two-lane paved shoulder road and the work started on June 3, at 7:27 am and was completed on June 7, at 5 pm, the minister said in a video message.
Bommai rejected all the key infrastructure related proposals of Kerala, saying it will damage the eco-sensitive zones and wildlife sanctuaries.
We need to have patience as it is a dangerous operation,NDMA member Lt Gen (retd) Syed Ata Hasnain said.
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.
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.
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.
With the bodies of all the missing workers recovered, the two-day rescue operation ended late on Saturday evening.
Gadkari said the NHAI was working on setting up an InvIT to monetise its projects for mobilising resources through capital markets.
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.
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.
"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.
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.
Only NIIF has stayed the course as a viable infrastructure financing institution.
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.
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.
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.
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'.
The letter shared with the media on Saturday comes amid Maharashtra losing several big-ticket projects to neighbouring Gujarat.
The 100-km stretch of Mumbai-Ahmedabad highway claimed at least 62 lives.
Industry players, who do not want to come on record, say this state of affairs is hampering NHAI's functioning.
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.
The government began the selection process a year earlier and has twice gone through the process of short-listing candidates.
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.
NHAI to pull plug on Rs 3,000-crore ventures for poor show
