Ministry of road transport and highways, which targets to construct about 12,000 km road

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this year, has proposed to segregate the road stretches on BOT-toll (built-operate-transfer), annuity and EPC (engineering, procurement and construction) bases before inviting bids for the projects.

“The proposal is a part of the various suggestions given by the B K Chaturvedi committee. Accordingly, instead of going for BOT mode for all the projects, we will identify specific projects for each mode depending on their viability. This will save a lot of time for awarding the projects,” a senior road ministry official, who did not wish to be named, said.

At present, NHAI first tries to award projects on BOT-Toll basis. In case there is no response from firms, these projects are then shifted to BOT-annuity or EPC mode. The process delays some projects by almost a year. The suggestion comes after last year's experience when many national highways authority of India (NHAI) projects did not receive any bid or just attracted a single company. NHAI was targeting to invite bids for 60 projects worth Rs 65,000 crore by December last year.

Later, NHAI either restructured these projects or transferred them to annuity or EPC. Some of the projects for which only single bid was received include four-laning of Amritsar-Pathankot section (about 94 km at an estimated cost of Rs 851 crore), four laning of the Vijayawada-Machilipatnam section (65 km, Rs 550 crore) and the Maharashtra border-Nagpur section (95 km, Rs 1,205 crore). Even projects such as Amritsar-Pathankot and Maharashtra border-Nagpur or the eastern peripheral expressway stretch attracted only single bids.

The official said bidding for each project would be decided on the basis of traffic study. “If there is a high traffic anticipated, the projects would be on BOT-Toll. And, if there is low traffic, the government will have to construct it on its own,” he said.

The proposal has already gone for the prime minister’s approval. Industry observers feel that the ministry should have thought of this much before. “They should have done it a long time back. The entire process of going through BOT-toll and then annuity or EPC is time consuming. The segregation will give clarity to firms to be able to provide better focus on their respective projects,” Vishwah Udgirkar, executive director, PwC, said.