Effective policy measures by the Government over the last 36 months have revived the Indian road sector and supporting the execution pace. According to ICRA, these include steps like awarding projects after securing 80 per cent right of way; expediting projects stuck midway, delegating the power to grant forest clearances to regional offices, online filing for clearances to construct ROB and RUBs and increasing the limit on sand mining.

The NDA government has managed to save Rs 3 lakh crore worth bank loans to the road sector turning into NPAs, according to the minister of road transport and highways and shipping Nitin Gadkari.

National Highways Authority of India’s (NHAI) payment of mobilisation advances to developers will provide a fillip to the construction pace of hybrid annuity model (HAM) projects, says India Ratings and Research (Ind-Ra).

Udaipur Tollway Pvt. Ltd, a Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV) of India’s largest Highways Infrastructure developers, IRB Infrastructure Developers Ltd, has successfully achieved financial closure for its Udaipur – Gujarat Border 6 Laning BOT project.

The ability to harness and store large volumes of data to enable future services and add extensions to current services to improve can only be achieved with big data.

I think in many sectors the policies are conducive. The most recent example is the Rewa Ultra Mega Solar Project, where IFC was the lead public-private-partnership (PPP) transaction advisor. We helped structure the bidding process to include a three-tiered payment security mechanism.

On July 1, 2017 a new tax regime, in the works since over 15 years, designed as 'One Nation, One Tax', went live! Its impact on infrastructure will resolve future litigation in this area and although will mean higher tax, will also allow input tax credit in many categories.

MEP Infrastructure Developers Limited has been given April 25, 2017, as the Appointed Date for its Hybrid Annuity project in Gujarat (the Talaja-Mahuva section) in accordance with the Concession Agreement executed with the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI). The project is a part of the Bhavnagar-Veraval stretch.

Just as with PPP projects, HAM contracts too are finding financial closure to be a challenge. Banks, especially, are wary of putting their money on developers with weak financials and lack of adequate experience. Industry insiders, however, beg to differ.