India Made World Record On Highway construction. How? – Free PDF

What has happened?

• The Ministry of Road Transport and Highways (MoRTH) has surpassed the target for highway construction for fiscal 2021 despite the pandemic.
• MoRTH constructed about 13,298 km of national highways during the financial year that ended on 31 March, clocking over 37 km of road construction per day.
• Gadkari’s ministry awarded 10,467 km of highway projects in 2020-21 as against 8,948 km in the FY20.
• This is significant as the first few months of the previous financial year were lost due to nation-wide lockdown in the wake of covid-19 pandemic, when construction activities were badly affected.
• “It’s a world record. Nowhere in the world has such quantum of work happened. I am now confident that we will be able to construct over 40 km road per day in 2021-22.”
• Gadkari said at an event Thursday.
• For 2021-22, the ministry has set its construction target at 14,600 km of national highways.

How it was achieved?

• MoRTH had initiated a slew of relief measures which helped it exceed the target,
• Such as a shift from milestone-based billing, typically of 45-75 days, to monthly billing and
• Release of retention money/performance security in proportion to the work executed, among others.
• These also helped reduce the cash conversion cycle, while also getting performance guarantees and associated margin monies released for the executed portion of the projects.
• “Notwithstanding the high cost of re-mobilising labour, many road contractors made special arrangements to facilitate return of labour due to improved cash conversion cycle from MoRTH/ NHAI projects.
• Ably supported by the liquidity boosting measures by MoRTH and NHAI; the execution witnessed sharp increase,“ Said Rajeshwar Burla, vice president, rating agency ICRA.

How was the ministry able to construct roads during lockdown, when all economic activities were halted?

• The most stringent of lockdown, between March and July, fell just before or during the monsoon, a seasonally weak period for construction activities.
• Economic activities started picking up from August-September, and road construction also restarted.
• Government measures like providing bank guarantees to contractors helped with steady cash flow, while speeding up of payments and clearing dues,
• Ensuring availability of land upfront for road construction also helped accelerate road construction.

What were the critical aspects that led to the government exceeding its target?

• An important aspect was the efforts taken by the government in making unencumbered land available to constructors.
• The government also successfully channelised funds, which included speeding up of payment dues, providing bank guarantees and facilitating payments that helped contractors achieve a better cash flow to finish projects.
• Also, road traffic boomed after the lockdown was lifted, seeing a recovering to pre-covid levels faster than rail or air traffic.
• MoRTH was able to ramp up road projects ahead of deadline as all fund related challenges of contractors were addressed by the ministry, and contractors in turn had to just mobilise people to complete the projects.

Govt’s push for highway construction

• Since May 2014, the average per-day figure for road construction is 25 km,
• Almost three times what was managed under the previous UPA government, which could only build 9 km of roads per day between 2012 and 2014.
• The current government, like the previous NDA government under Atal Bihari Vajpayee, has given top priority to the highways sector, which had hit a rough patch since 2007.
• Between 2014-15 and 2021-22, the overall expenditure on construction of national highways has increased to Rs 1,83,101 crore from Rs 38,867 crore.
• In the same period, the total length of national highways has increased to 1,37,625 km (as on 20 March 2021) from 91,287 km in April 2014 — a 50% jump.

Q) Which of the following statements regarding Highways is correct?

1. The length of overall State highways is more than that of National highways.
2. The share of National highways in the total roads in India is around 2%

1. 1 only
2. 2 only
3. Both 1 & 2
4. None of the above

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