According to the ministry of road transport and highways, work has been completed on just 2,670 km of highways in the first four months of the fiscal or just about 20% of a target of building 13,800 km of highways this financial year.

The award of road projects has also fallen steeply to 1,125 km from 1,975 km in the same period a year ago, indicating a thinning of the pipeline for projects that would impact construction over a longer period.

“A series of factors including extended monsoon has impacted construction in early part of this year. This is normally the case every year when, during monsoons, work on highways slows down. But there is a very large pipeline of projects and work will pick up pace in the second half of year to take construction work closer to the target,” said a government official privy to the development.

The ministry did not respond to queries till press time.

As per the latest MoRTH data, highway construction slowed to a mere 420 km or 14 km per day in July. It was 2,670 km in the April-July period.

Though the numbers this year so far are marginally higher than the 2,493 km built in April-July last year, experts said maintaining pace and taking it up substantially this year would be a challenge as there’s a slowdown in both constuction and awards ahead of general elections.

According to a report from rating agency ICRA, highway awards normally slow down in the last quarter of a financial year falling just before elections, when the model code of conduct comes into force.

If this scenario plays out in FY24, constructing over 40 km of highways a day in eight months would be difficult, making the reworked target of 13,800 km for FY24 unachievable, said an official at a major consultancy asking not to be named.

However, some are still positive about the construction potential — that despite two bad years with extremely slow beginnings the country could more than make up during the second half of the fiscal.

“Road construction is set to accelerate 25% to 12,500-13,000 km per year over the current and next fiscals on continued healthy awarding of projects and step up in execution by road construction players,” said Gurpreet Chhatwal, Managing Director, CRISIL Ratings.

The pace of construction of roads bodes well for the economy, given the high multiplier effect of road development. The growth is expected to sustain over the medium term, supported by conducive policies, strong investor interest and healthy financial profiles, leading to stable credit quality of companies in the CRISIL Ratings portfolio in both highways and roads sectors.

The government has upwardly revised highway-building target for the current year as it looks to fast-track infrastructure development ahead of state and central polls in coming months.

Highway development ensuring better and faster connectivity have always got a positive connect with the voters and work there gets immediate appreciation.According to officials in the ministry of road transport and highways, government has reworked the highway construction target for FY24 to 13,800 km from 12,500 km kept earlier. This is even higher than all time high construction levels actives in FY21 when during lockdowns a record 13,327 km of highway was built at 36.51 km per day.

“We have issued instructions to construction agencies to push up the pace of road construction and achieve over 40 km of highway construction per day in remaining period of the year so that the revised target is achieved without fail,” said the official quoted earlier.

Highway construction in the pre-pandemic period of FY20 spanned 10,237 km at a daily rate of 28.04 km. The pace increased during the first pandemic year (FY21), when lockdowns helped accelerate construction, resulting in a record 13,327 km of highways built at 36.51 km per day. In FY22, the rate slowed again to 10,457 km at 28.64 km per day. For FY22, the road ministry initially aimed to construct 14,600 km of highways—or 40 km per day. However, it later revised the goal to 12,000 km. The year FY23 ended with 28.3 km/day construction with overall 10,331 km of highways being built in the year.

MoRTH wants construction to reach over 40 km/day. This is exactly what highway construction agencies would be required to in the balance FY24 to achieve the annual target.

Updated: 31 Aug 2023, 11:05 PM IST