The National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) awards 774 km highway projects

The National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) has awarded a record 744 km highway projects for the April-August 2020 period.

NHAI’s project awards are likely to exceed the targeted 4,500 km in FY21.

During April to August 2020, NHAI awarded 26 projects of 744 km length compared to 676 km in FY20, 368 km in FY19 and 504 km in FY18.

A little more than 70 percent of the projects have been awarded in the engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) route, in which the authority bears all expenses; while the remaining were awarded in the hybrid annuity model (HAM).

Under HAM, NHAI pays 40 percent of the project cost during construction period and the remaining 60 percent as annuity payments over operations period to the developer. The developer, therefore, needs to find money for the 60 percent construction cost at the initial stage, but his equity share turns out to be less than 10 percent in most cases.

Capital cost of these 26 projects is over Rs 31,000 crore, which includes the cost of civil construction, land acquisition and other pre-construction activities.

In Q1/FY21, NHAI disbursed more than Rs 15,000 crore to the vendors.

https://nhai.gov.in