Construction of Roads by Private Sector
The strategy of the Government is to promote investment with public-private participation, in National Highways projects for harnessing efficiency, technological advancement and better maintenance of the public assets during their respective lifecycles to supplement publicly-funded endeavour. Accordingly, the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) has adopted Build-Operate-Transfer [BOT] (Toll) mode of delivery under public private partnership (PPP) as the preferred mode for development of highway projects.
The construction cost of roads varies based on parameters like topography, availability of material resources and climatic conditions etc. “The-user-should-pay” is the policy of the Government according to which the user fee charges as determined by the Government are mandated to be charged from the user.
Government has laid down toll policy in the form of National Highway Fee (Determination of Rates and Collection) Rules 2008 as amended from time to time for systematic revenue generation for BOT (Toll) projects, which are used by the concerned concessionaires to provide revenue streams for reasonable return on the private investment made by them in development and maintenance of highways. Toll or user charges is only one of the sources of the revenue apart from cess or other taxes, which are utilized for upgradation and strengthening of Highways Infrastructure.
This information was given by the Minister of State of Road Transport and Highways, Shri Jitin Prasada in a written reply in Rajya Sabha today.
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