Maharashtra has a road network of 2,41,000 km. The state’s expenditure on roads has increased from Rs 539 crore in 2005 to Rs 2,368 crore. In 1996, the state government decided to formulate a private-public-partnership (PPP) policy to finance its Road Development Plan (1981–2001), which in turn called for about Rs 26,000 crore of investments.
The information was elicited by IndiaSpend, which filed four rounds of Right to Information (RTI) petitions through the last 75 days. Information was sought by IndiaSpend on the amount of toll collected on the Mumbai-Pune Expressway, the Pune-Nashik highway, the Thane-Ghodbunder road and Thane-Bhiwandi road. Responses were received only for the last two queries from the authorities concerned.
The policy also led to the creation of the Maharashtra State Road Development Corporation (MSRDC) to undertake development of roads and related infrastructure, mostly with private participation.
The projects are undertaken by MSRDC under the ‘build, operate and transfer’ (BOT) basis. In financing BOT projects, developers are allowed to recover investments by collecting toll over a concession period, generally 30 years. MSRDC, from its date of inception (July 9, 1996), has completed 18 projects, with an estimated cost (final cost, not necessarily the cost when the project was kicked off) of Rs 7,187 crore and actual expenditure of Rs 6,822 crore.
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