Tuesday, October 16, 2012

Infrastructural needs can at best be described as pathetic

UPA government’s record in augmenting its infrastructural needs can at best be described as pathetic, feels Sharad Gupta
 
However, the biggest blow that UPA government delivered to the infrastructure sector was to the roads. All the national highway projects have been running behind schedule – ranging from few months to five years – resulting in manifold cost escalation. And the Minister for Shipping, Road Transport and Highways, T. R. Baalu had busied himself with shuffling his officers if not kicking off controversy over the Ram Sethu.

He changed the ministry’s secretary five times, NHAI chairman four times and junior officials several times over, during the last five years. What he couldn’t change however, was the consistently falling progress of National Highway Development Programme (NHDP). It slid from 81% during 2004, the year he took over, to less than 20% in 2009, the year when he would quit office. In fact, no new projects have been awarded during the last nine months.

Things turned ugly last month when World Bank (WB) cancelled a Rs.31 billion grant for four-laning of 485-kms long NH-28 from Muzaffarpur to Lucknow. The loan was sanctioned in 2005 and the project was supposed to be completed by 2010. Even Committee on Infrastructure chaired by the Prime Minister pointed out that NHAI was taking 20 months to award a project against the scheduled time frame of five months and the project award rate is down from 70% in 2005-06 to 17% in FY 2007-08. Only 49% of work was completed under the first phase of NHDP-I in 2007-08. That is why, the first phase of the NHDP project, which was supposed to be complete by December 2007 (after several revisions), is still on. Similarly, contracts for four-laning of 811 kms were to be given in FY 2007-08 under NHDP-II but MoRTH could award contracts for only 43 km, a pathetic 5% progress. The NHAI, however, performed slightly better by achieving 51% of its target of four-laning 2,013 kms.

Contracts could be awarded for just 278 kms out of targetted 3,278 kms during FY 2007-08 under NHDP-III – a dismal 9% achievement. Progress of NHDP-V was slightly better as 882 kms work was awarded against a target of 2,995 kms – 29% achievement during FY 2007-08. The situation can be gauged from the fact that it took NHAI six years to complete a nine-kms stretch of Tumkur by-pass in Karnataka.
 

Source : IIPM Editorial, 2012.

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