NHDP to get Rs 10,667 crore

New Delhi, Feb 28 (UNI) Continuing the focus on infrastructure building, Finance Minister P Chidambaram today enhanced the budgetary support for the National Highways Development Programme (NHDP) from Rs 9,945 crore in 2006-07 to Rs 10,667 crore in the next fiscal.

Presenting the General Budget 2007-08 in the Lok Sabha, Mr Chidambaram said the private sector investment leveraged under the NHDP is Rs 25,366 crore.

The National Highways Authority of India (NHAI), the nodal agency for executing projects under the NHDP, has been given Rs 2,072 crore as viability gap funding and Rs 1,900 crore as negative grant.

The minister said work on the Golden Quadrilateral is nearly complete and there is considerable progress in the North-South, East-West Corridor project, which is expected to be completed by 2009.

''NHDP-III, NHDP-V and NHDP-VI are in advanced stages of planning or implementation...Under the programme for the North East Region (SARDP-NE), 450 km have been awarded in 2006-07 and the balance will be awarded in 2007-08,'' he informed in his budget speech.

He said the road-cum-rail bridge at Munger (Bihar) over the Ganga had been taken up as a national project. Another road-cum-rail bridge at Bogibeel (Asom), over the Brahmaputra, will be taken up as a national project.

With regard to the Public-Private-Partnership (PPP) model, Mr Chidambaram said it had enabled private sector participation in the creation and maintenance of infrastructure.

So far, under the viability gap funding scheme, 37 proposals have been received of which 21 have been granted 'in-principle' approval with a total project cost of Rs 9,842 crore and an estimated viability gap funding of Rs 2,521 crore.

''The pace is slow and there is a need to adopt a more aggressive approach for competitive bidding,'' he said, while proposing to set up a revolving fund with a corpus of Rs 100 crore to quicken project preparation.

The fund will contribute up to 75 per cent of the preparatory expenditure in the form of interest-free loan that will eventually be recovered from the successful bidder.

''Guidelines for operating the fund will be announced in due course,'' he said.

UNI