KUALA LUMPUR: India will soon be building 20 kilometers of roads a day in a bid to replace the decrepit highways that carry nearly three quarters of freight and passenger traffic, the country’s roads minister said Monday.
Road Transport and Highways Minister Kamal Nath told reporters that India was building two kilometers of roads a day when he took office in May but the rate has climbed to nine kilometers now.
“So we got to scale it up, which I hope we will do by March-April to 20 kilometers,” said Nath, who is in Malaysia to meet with government officials and potential investors. India allows 100 percent foreign investment in road development.
Building 20 kilometers of roads a day is necessary to reach India’s target of 7,000 kilometers a year to create an efficient network of highways that can complement India’s economic growth, which is being threatened by its crumbling infrastructure.
India is planning to spend $500 billion to upgrade its ports, roads and airports — one-third of it coming from the private sector — amid hopes of achieving a 9 percent growth in its gross domestic product in 2011. The economy grew by 7.9 percent in the last quarter, a stark contrast to the economic gloom in most of the world except China. “As India moves on in its growth trajectory, the biggest deficit we have is our infrastructure deficit,” Nath, a former commerce minister, said.
“In India a road is not just for connectively. It impacts trade, industry and agriculture. It is a very important ingredient of inclusive growth. So infrastructure and roads have a very high priority in India,” he said.
India has a network of 3.4 million kilometers of roads, the second largest in the world, but only two percent of those are national highways that carry 40 percent of total traffic.The rest of the roads come in various forms, ranging from two-lane tar roads to unpaved rural tracks. Only 0.06 percent of national highways are eight-lane expressways and 0.35 percent are six-lane roads.
Still, Indian roads carry 70 percent of the country’s freight and 85 percent of passenger traffic. The average speed on highways is about 50 km/h (30 mph), a major impediment for businesses and factories awaiting deliveries.
Nath said the government would have awarded $20 billion worth of contracts by June to maintain its target of building 7,000 kilometers of roads a year.
One of the biggest obstacles to building roads in India is acquiring private land, a time-consuming and bureaucratic process. Nath said he has streamlined the process by setting up 150 land acquisition units. The time taken to acquire land has been reduced from 18 months to eight months, he said.
Also, bids are being awarded only after 80 percent of land is acquired. “Previously, we used to award the bid with no land, no right of way,” he said.
