Reports indicate that the union government prefers to award road projects on engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) model because of poor interest shown by developers for PPP (BOT) model.
It is learnt that the recent award of road projects witnessed a considerable decline in the number of bidders on the BOT toll basis.
Faced with huge slippages from targets, the ministry reckons that the less time-consuming EPC mode could be preferred. EPC mode takes only 3-4 months for award of a project while BOT takes 18-20 months.
According to experts, private parties are not interested in PPP projects in road sector despite a higher ratio of viability gap funding as their financial position is not sound.
Meanwhile, it is learnt that the road ministry may not be able to meet the target to award 4,000 km of road projects on EPC this fiscal as the process has started only recently.
According to official sources, of the total EPC projects covering 4,000 km to be awarded this year, only one project covering 130 km has received all approvals and the rest are awaiting approvals.
It may be noted that the government wants to adopt EPC model after a hiatus of four years as there was not a single EPC project awarded in the sector between 2008-09 and 2011-12. During these years, build-operate-transfer (BOT) projects have generally seen an increase, peaking at 6,491 km in 2011-12.
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