Media reports say that the National Highways Authority of India’s (NHAI) plea to the government to improve financing provisions for highways project has not worked so far. Recently, 19 high projects were bid out, but there were no takers and NHAI now believes that conditions for public-private partnership (PPP) projects are not right.
Keeping this in view, NHAI proposed that road projects should not be developed in the PPP mode, especially the big ones. It gave several reasons like the current growth scenario cannot support big highway projects typically developed in the PPP mode. Secondly, there are no private equity funds which are willing to come in at this moment to take up these projects. Thirdly, there are no developments regarding many provisions which NHAI has proposed to improve financing conditions.
Hence, NHAI now believes that projects can only be developed through the engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) mode. However, the Union Finance Ministry which is a part of the NHAI board, has opposed this.
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