Centre to spend USD70 billion on highways

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BANGALORE: Union Minister for Road Transport and Highways C P Joshi on Wednesday said the government will spend US $70 billi..

BANGALORE: Union Minister for Road Transport and Highways C P Joshi on Wednesday said the government will spend US $70 billion to improve national highways over the next five years. Speaking after inaugurating the EXCON-2011, the sixth international construction equipment and construction Technology trade fair organised by the Confederation of Indian Industries (CII), Joshi stated that this would be achieved with through public private partnership (PPP) model. The minister also informed that tax-free public debt bonds would be issued to raise `10,000 crore for the purpose. Unwilling to divulge details of the debt funds, he said that said that public sector companies would issue bonds up to `30,000 crore in this financial year.“Mechanisation is imperative to speed up the implementation of India’s infrastructure projects,” he said and added that investment made in infrastructure sector in 2011 accounted for 7.9 per cent of the GDP and it is likely to increase to 10.7 per cent by 2017. Joshi added that during the 12th Five Year Plan the infrastructure investment would be to the tune of US $1 trillion.The government would soon come out with a public issue to raise `10,000 crore. Reiterating that the government aims to build 20 km of highways every day, Joshi said that they had still not achieved this.Earlier B Muthuraman, President, Confederation of Indian Industries (CII), said India should have a solid manufacturing base and quality infrastructure to achieve a double digit growth. “The country needs quality construction equipment to achieve this,” he observed. He said that it is important to increase the growth of manufacturing sector. Currently the manufacturing sector contributes about 16% to GDP and 12% to employment. However, it has the potential to increase its contribution to about 25-30% .A report on ‘The Indian Earthmoving and Construction Equipment Industry Vision 2020: Commanding New Heights’ was released. The is expected to reach the size of US$ 23 billion by 2020, the meeting was informed.