Highway ministry shifts gears

The road transport and highways ministry has set an ambitious target of building over 40 km of roads daily in 2016-17, more than double the current pace of construction at nearly 16.5 km per day.
While the construction target is 15,000 km, the highways agencies have been asked to award 25,000 km, which is two-and-a-half times more than last year's achievement. The bold target signals the growing confidence of the government which is celebrating its achievements in reviving three-fourth of the national highway projects that were languishing when it came to power two years ago.
Sources in the government said the new target would have seemed a tall order two years ago when 73 highway projects, involving Rs 1 lakh crore investment, were stuck. “We decided not to flinch from taking hard options and terminated contracts for 39 projects covering about 4,620 km. Now these projects are being restructured ,“ said a PMO functionary who is closely engaged with the road transport and highways ministry's plans for the sector. Another 16 projects have been revived.“We have re-awarded 16 projects and three projects have been handed over to the state governments. Two projects have been dropped and in another 18 cases, bids have either been invited or are being invited,“ said a government official.
To revive the projects on public-private-partnership (PPP) mode, the government has approved securitisation of future cash flows allowing the concessionaires with surplus revenue to raise subordinate loan up to 30% of the project cost on the strength of future cash flows to invest as equity in other projects. This has benefited seven road projects to securitise Rs.415 crore.
It also permitted rescheduling the premium payment in 19 stressed projects, where developers had promised paying upfront amount annually while bagging projects .Premium of Rs.10,000 crore has been deferred so far. The government has also allowed harmonious substitution of existing concessionaire of stressed projects and also permitted 100% divestment of equity in projects that have been completed two years back. These two decisions benefited nine projects.
The government also authorised NHAI to revive stuck projects by rationalising the compensation to developers in the form of extending tolling period where work was delayed due to fault on government's part. NHAI has been authorised to infuse one-time fund to complete PPP projects under where 50% work has been completed. Operational details and concerns of banks in giving the first right of recovering investment to NHAI are being addressed, sources said.

Somewhere in Haryana....

Somewhere in Pune....

India headed for top slot in global LED light market

India is poised to emerge as the largest market for lighting systems based on LEDs (light-emitting diodes), thanks to the Narendra Modi-led government's UJALA (Unnat Jyoti by Affordable LEDs for All) scheme for replacing all inefficient bulbs with these energy-efficient lamps. “With India selling 770 million LED bulbs every day , the country will soon become the LED capital of the world. Prices of LED bulbs have come down to 55 pence (Rs.52) from over 3.5 pounds (Rs.332) two years ago,“ a government statement quoted power minister Piyush Goyal as telling investors in London on Wednesday .
Today , 12% of all LED lighting systems sold in the world is consumed in India, according to Saurabh Kumar, managing director of Energy Efficiency Services. The company , promoted by state-run power utilities, is the nodal agency for implementing the UJALA scheme.
UJALA has brought down the price of an LED bulb to Rs 85 for a 9-watt on an average.

FASTag

The National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) has made it easy to get past toll booths by introducing 32 electronic toll-enabled plazas in Maharashtra. Highway users can now zip through without waiting in long queues to pay toll by cash, saving time and fuel and reducing air pollution and paper-use.
FASTag, the cashless payment mechanism launched by NHAI, will facilitate near non-stop movement of vehicles thorough toll plazas. It will also bring more transparency to toll collection. The facility is currently operational on the Pune-Mumbai expressway, Pune-Solapur, Pune-Satara, Surat-Dahisar, Nagpur-Kondhali, and Talegaon-Amravati highways. FASTag uses a Radio Frequency Identification technology for paying toll directly from a prepaid account.

No takers for Dharavi redevelopment

Maharashtra state government's ambitious Rs.22,000 crore Dharavi redevelopment project has not received a single bid. The Dharavi Redevelopment Authority (DRA) had invited global tenders and April 20 was the last date for submission of bids. “At 1 pm, the deadline for submission, we had not received a single bid. We have now extended the deadline by two weeks to May 5,“ said DRA chief executive officer Nirmal Deshmukh. In March, when the authority had called a pre-bid meeting to apprise probable builders of the public-private participation model through which the slum was to be redeveloped, 16 companies had attended the meeting.
This is the government's second attempt to redevelop Dharavi. The Congress-led Democratic Front government had in 2007 invited expressions of interest and had received 14 responses, of which seven later backed out. The other bids were found faulty and the project was cancelled in 2011.
Spread over 557 acres, Dharavi had been divided into five sectors for ease of redevelopment. Sector five was being redeveloped by the Maharashtra Housing Area Development Authority (Mhada). Global tenders had been invited for the other four sectors.
Mhada has been unable to fast-track redevelopment in sector 5. “The authority took up redevelopment in 2011 but only constructed a building on a vacant plot.The building was ready a year ago but no shifting has been done so far,“ said officials.
The slum houses 60,000 families and the project was aimed at providing them 350 sq ft tenements free of cost, besides adding 8,000 tenements for project-affected persons or affordable housing. It had also intended to create 40,000-50,000 tenements as a free sale component.

Mumbai airport enters big league

Sometime early this year, the Mumbai airport quietly crossed a milestone when it handled over 40 million passengers to enter the league of big airports of the world. The nearly 14% growth in passenger traffic into and out of Mumbai recorded this fiscal though brings along a key concern. Phase 1 of the Navi Mumbai airport won't be ready before 2019, and the current airport terminal buildings won't be able to keep up with the appetite for air travel. With demand outstripping supply, it is the passengers who may have to bear the brunt of increased fares.
In the fiscal year 2015-16, Mumbai airport handled a total of 41.67 million passengers, compared to the 36.6 million passengers it handled in 2014-2015. Forty million is a milestone as industry bodies like Airports Council International segregate airports into different sizes, starting from 2 million to over 40 million. Mumbai airport has entered the big league, handling nearly 42 million passengers in 2015-16. Aviation industry bodies classify airports ranging from those which handle 2-5 million annual passengers to the last category , which is all airports that handle “over 40 million passengers“, that is, the big league. Till now, Mumbai airport was in the “25-40 million“ category and competed for awards and honours in this group.
With its entry into the over 40 million category , it's now in the league of the main airports of cities like Dubai, London, Beijing, New York etc. But unlike any of the airports of any of these cities, the plans afoot to cater to air traffic growth out of and into Mumbai hardly match the big league.
Till a few years ago, the plan was to have Phase 1of Navi Mumbai airport completed by 2015 so that its passenger handling capacity of 15 million along with Mumbai airport's integrated Terminal 2's passenger handling capacity of 40 million would have been enough to meet the growing demand for flights. However, Mumbai airport's T2 and domestic terminals together now handle more than 40 million passengers. The new deadline for completion of Phase 1 of Navi Mumbai is December 2019. The next four years then would be crucial for Mumbai.
An airport's capacity is largely determined by the number of passengers its terminals can handle and the number of flights its runways can take.Mumbai's main runway already operates to its full capacity during peak hours.
As for the terminal buildings, currently , all flights, except those operated by IndiGo, Spice Jet and Go Air are handled by Mumbai T2. The three low-cost airlines operate out of domestic terminals in Vile Parle, but they will eventually be moved to T2 in the coming months under a phase-wise transfer plan. “These three airlines have a combined market share of about 57%. While the passenger handling capacity of T2 building is being augmented, there is only so much extra load it can take,“ the official said, adding that delay in construction of the Navi Mumbai airport has been forcing certain change of plans at the Mumbai airport.
The Hartsfield Jackson-Atlanta airport, the biggest in the world in terms of passenger traffic, handled 101 million passengers in 2015. Dubai airport handled 78 million passengers.While India is not up there, reports suggest its aviation industry will show high growth in the coming decade.