Kamal Nath announces 20-kilometer-per day road project

New Delhi, May 31 (ANI): Union Minister of Road Transport and Highways Kamal Nath on Monday announced the 20-kilometer-per day road project that would involve the construction of 20 kilometers of road per day in the country.

"If we are to catch up with the past, today what we are building is not building for the future. Today, what we are building, is building to catch up with the past because there is this huge deficit," said Kamal Nath.

"The infrastructure deficit is so profound in our country, whether it is our ports, the airports or our roads in the power sector, so we set this target of building 20 kilometers a day," he added.

The Central Government has planned to invest 60 billion dollars for the ambitious five-year programme to fill the road deficit.

The National Highway Authority of India (NHAI) has estimated its annual borrowings from the domestic and the international market to be more than Rs 4.3 billion for the next 15 years.

Nath said the contracts for construction of 12,000 kilometers of road would be awarded by the end of this fiscal year.

"In the last one year, we awarded 118 projects with the length of 7,478 kilometers. Now what does this mean? This means that if you add the previous construction, it amounted to that the work in progress will be 12,348 kilometers," said Nath.

"In this new year what we propose to award, we hope to award 12,000 kilometer. That means at the end of the current year, we will have 24,000 kilometers of work in progress," he added. (ANI)