Highway liquor ban: Maharashtra may see 2,000 km of roads denotified
If all the local bodies in Maharashtra opt to ‘denotify’ the parts of state highways passing through their limits, a total road length of 2000 km could lose the status of highway, it is estimated. In the wake of Supreme Court order banning liquor sale within 500 meters of highways, at least three municipal corporations in Maharashtra passed resolutions seeking denotification of highways, so as to avoid the ban. If all municipal corporations were to pass similar resolutions, not more than 2000 km of highway stretches would get denotified (i.E., lose their status as a highway), state PWD minister Chandrakant Patil said here today. “After the decision of Supreme Court, if any municipal corporation or local governing body approaches the state for denotification of state highways, we will take appropriate action,” said Patil. “After the SC decision, three corporations (Jalgaon, Latur and Yavatmal) approached for denotification. The state government acted speedily and those stretches were denotified,” he said. Mason Cole Authentic Jersey
Delhi: Government plans elevated parallel highway to Indira Gandhi International Airport
The Centre is considering a proposal to construct an elevated parallel highway and a tunnel from Haryana side connecting with the Indira Gandhi International Airport to ease traffic woes, Union Minister Nitin Gadkari said today. If materialised, this will be in addition to Dwarka Express Highway, the work on which will start soon, Road Transport and Highways Minister Gadkari, who had a high-level meeting with Civil Aviation Minister Ashok Gajpathi Raju in this connection, told PTI. “We are examining a proposal to build an elevated parallel road to the airport and traffic from Haryana side can be diverted to it. The main obstacle is there are two radars on the sides of the proposed elevated road. I have discussed with the Civil Aviation Minister and the Airports Authority of India (AAI) if there is any possibility for changing the position of the radars,” the minister said. The minister said the government will also construct a tunnel from Haryana side and connect it with the T3 international airport to reduce the frequent traffic jams. “We have given these two proposals to him (Raju),” Gadkari said. The minister said both the proposals are in addition to the proposed Dwarka Express way for which he “took a review meeting with Union Civil Aviation Minister Raju and Airport authority to resolve issues”. Sam Hubbard Jersey
CAG submits report on DND Flyway to SC
The Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) has submitted its report on the Delhi-Noida-Delhi Flyway, the road that connects Noida to south Delhi, to the Supreme Court which will decide whether the Rs 25 per entry charge on cars and Rs 12 on two-wheelers should continue. A senior CAG official said the report was submitted to the SC before the extended deadline ended late last month, but refused to divulge details. In October last year, the Allahabad High Court had scrapped toll on the DND Flyway, observing that the private company had recovered the construction and maintenance costs besides 20% operating profit long ago. The court found no merit in the private operator’s argument of “under-recovery” of an escalated cost that increased substantially each year as per its “agreement” with the authority. The SC refused to stay Allahabad HC’s order but asked the CAG to conduct detailed scrutiny of the company’s accounts and review its agreements with the Noida authority that guided the cost and revenue determination. The auditor has looked into the agreements signed by the private operator and the Noida authority towards construction and maintenance of the toll road. The CAG, besides its analysis on revenue collection, has looked into other aspects of the project such as long-term maintenance of the flyway to prevent accidents when it becomes a toll-free expressway. According to the financial statements submitted before the Allahabad HC, the toll bridge company had claimed that it had “recovered Rs 810.18 crore from toll income from the date of commencement of the project till March 31, 2014”. After deduction of operating and maintenance expenses and income tax, the private operator generated a surplus income of Rs 578.80 crore, according to an affidavit submitted by the company. The HC, before rejecting the plea of the company to continue toll, noted that the operator had earned an additional revenue of Rs 300 crore from toll fee between April 2014 and September 2016. This was in addition to Rs 810 crore toll fee it had earned till 2014. “We are, therefore, more than satisfied that the concessionaire cannot now recover user fees from commuters of the Noida toll bridge i.e. DND Flyway,” the HC had observed in its judgment of October 26, 2016. LaDainian Tomlinson Authentic Jersey
UP to repair 85,943 kms of highways in next two months time
Uttar Pradesh Government today announced that by June 15 next, around 85,943 kilometers of roads including national Highways, state highways and others would be repaired at a war footing. Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath has instructed the state PWD department that the officials would be punished if it was found damaged after repair again during the monsoon. The issue was taken up in the state cabinet meeting here today chaired by the CM. “Against the total 2,25,825 kilometers of highways in the state, around 85,943 kms of road are in bad shape”, said a survey done by the PWD department for which funds would be allotted by the government soon. In another decision, the government allowed relaxation to those who appear for the Provincial Civil Services (PCS) of 2013 batch and they could now twice in the exams. It will benefit around 40,000 youths in the state, said government spokesperson and UP minister Sidharthnath Singh. The government has also approved the state’s share of 40 per cent in the development works in 7 districts on the Indo-Nepal government as per the changed norms. In order to prevent the deadly Japanese Encephalitis (JE) and Acute Encephalitis syndrome (AES) prevailing in 37 districts of the state, the government has prepared a strategy to counter it in this monsoon season. “Already the officials had held video-conferencing with all the CMOs and SMSs while the doctors of all the Primary Health centres and Community Health Centres would go for a training at the BRD Medical college hospital in Gorakhpur to aware them about the killer disease,” Mr Singh, who is also the state health minister said. He said that already fogging has started in the affected areas during the past one week, while 10 beds have been increased in all the district hospitals for the JE and AES patients besides ministers and officials have been asked to visit the disease prone areas to monitor the preventive measures. Meanwhile, the CM also instructed the concerned department to monitor drinking water facilities during the summer season. State minister Mahendra Singh has been asked to visit Bundelkhand region to review the supply of drinking water to human being and animals while state urban development minister Suresh Kumar Khanna has been asked to monitor the drinking water supply in the urban areas. Jon Casey Womens Jersey
Government builds 22 km national highways per day last fiscal
The country saw construction of 22 km of national highways (NHs) per day last fiscal against the target of 41 km a day, Parliament was informed today. “The rate of construction of NHs during the last two financial year 2015-16 and 2016-17 was 16 km a day and 22 km per day, respectively,” Minister of State for Road Transport and Highways Mansukh Lal Mandavia told the Rajya Sabha in a written reply. The ministry had set an ambitious target of 15,000 km which comes out to be 41 km per day for construction of NHs during 2016-17, he said. He said 16,036 km of road construction, including 4,335 km by NHAI, has been awarded during the last fiscal. “Seventy-eight works in a length of 4,344 km amounting to about Rs 51,737 crore and 76 works in a length of 4,335 km amounting to about Rs 70,000 crore have been awarded in 2015-16 and 2016-17, respectively,” he said. Lorenzo Cain Jersey
Convenient classification, collateral damage
The Supreme Court ban on alcohol sales near highways has people going to great lengths. Literally. One bar in Kerala built a maze to push the travel distance between the highway and the bar beyond the prescribed 500m dry zone. The more common response, however, is simply to relabel the roads to make highways disappear and local roads emerge overnight. A 9 April Hindu BusinessLine article reported that “hundreds of kilometres” of highways in Maharashtra, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Rajasthan, Punjab and West Bengal have recently become local, municipal or district roads. More states seem poised to follow the lead: the Aam Aadmi Party explicitly asked the Goa government to denotify state highways wherever legally possible in order to protect the tourist industry. This is all well and good—more jugaad at work—but what happens when the next hapless researcher wants to investigate, say, “The dynamics of road development under competitive federalism”? The proportion of highway kilometres among roads is a (crude) summary statistic for the state of the road network. It will immediately look worse for FY 2017-18. The strange bulge in the share of local roads in 2017 will probably also be concentrated in areas with rapid economic change—the kinds of areas along the edges of cities and corridors where entrepreneurs are setting up brewpubs, hotels and restaurants. Who will be the first to spin a story about the links between regional growth or urbanization and the rise of local control as proxied by jurisdiction over infrastructure? Someday, somewhere, perhaps buried in comparative analysis, it will happen. Closer home, it’s a matter of time before a state or local politician claims credit for an amazing increase in the share of local roads under his or her watch. The quality of India’s economic, environmental and social data has come under increasing scrutiny as researchers compare it to a wider array of alternative unofficial sources. Long-standing claims about methodological and process shortcomings are gaining more “oomph” as anomalies in the statistical picture of the country have emerged. How much water does India have? The answers from its scientists and its ministries vary. Weather? Skymet and the India Meteorological Department offer different pictures. Consumption? Take your pick—the National Sample Survey Office or Central Statistics Office or private market research. Growth? There is more variation between estimates than can be explained by different calculation methods alone. And luminosity data offer yet another picture. The ongoing critique of data focuses on collection techniques and technical concerns rather than accusations of blatant politicization (I am going to leave controversies over definitions, such as those around urbanization or poverty, aside for now). People may argue that the government is picking its headline numbers politically, but few would contend that it is systematically manipulating the deeper collection processes behind them. It doesn’t have to directly manipulate; policy frameworks that create incentives for convenient classification can have the same effect. Classifying for convenience is not conventionally “political” in the sense of manipulation of the big picture to gain points with voters or investors; but it is purposeful, and for purposes other than accurate descriptions of the state of the economy, polity and environment. Collateral damage is still damage. Convenient classification is common. Forests, for example, are notified by the state without a uniform definition. And a designation as “forest” has implications for terms of industrial use as well as tribal rights. It is not surprising that some forests, especially those with mining and industrial development potential, don’t show up in the data. It’s not clear what effect this has on the overall forest area count, since there are other incentives to promote forests embedded in fiscal transfer rules. But it would be surprising if these pushes and pulls did not affect official data. Similarly, every tax exemption—for research and development, for agricultural income, for service exports—not only encourages differences in real behaviour, but also incentivizes reclassification that distorts the statistical picture. It’s the same with tariff variations, differential regulation, or any other kind of targeted treatment for activities or entities that cannot be readily, cheaply, unambiguously audited. Ray Fisman and Shang-Jin Wei, for example, have a series of papers that show a correlation between the differences in tariff treatment for similar goods and mismatches between reported exports from one country and imports to a partner country. Misreporting of trade in certain kinds of cars, cultural artefacts, or frozen poultry may not seem to matter much on the scale of things, but consider how the fiction might affect reports on an industry outlook or the analysis of sectoral transitions. A forensic accounting of the impact of industrial policy on data and our understanding of economic history could be fascinating, if uncomfortable. Coming back, the pressures for more convenient classification are likely to build. Rules-based policy places more weight on metrics as gateways for valuable rights and concessions. The tightening of the tax net increases the impact of classification decisions, and thus the incentives to push them one way or another. Balancing the pressures for convenient classification, or at least recognizing that they exist when designing policy or allocating resources for enforcement, is an essential addition to the to-do list on data quality. Tennessee Titans Jersey
Gadkari expressed concern over a large number of road
Accidents due to drunk driving and said that the government was thinking of strict action against such people. Asserting that life was of paramount importance, he said the ministry was planning to come up with crash barriers on the roadside. The government, he said, has already 786 black spots across the country, which are most accident-prone. “There is a provision in the bill under which if holes were found on the roads DPR designer and contractor would be held accountable,” Gadkari said adding that the ministry would blacklist the contractors. The minister said that the proposal on strengthening the network of the trauma centres has also been received. Euro VI emission norms, Gadkari added, would be made mandatory from April 1, 2020. Josh Bellamy Jersey
India Ratings assigns AAA rating to NHAI’s FY18 borrowing plan
With government pushing infrastructure development by way of developing world class roads, National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) has geared up to borrow Rs 59,000 crore through a string of instruments including bonds during the current financial year (2017-18). The authority has been given AAA rating and a stable outlook by India Ratings and Research. Instruments with this rating are considered to have the highest degree of safety regarding timely servicing of financial obligations. Such instruments carry lowest credit risk. NHAI, being the sole agency responsible for the development of national highways in India, is strategically important to the government. Its fundamental purpose is to improve the national road transit infrastructure, better serve the national economy, and improve the country’s standard of living, the rating agency said in a release. Strong federal control, with the government monitoring its annual budget (including borrowings) and operational performance, support the ratings. The government provides substantial support to NHAI through fuel cess and grants. Fuel cess remains the major source of the authority’s finances. NHAI is also allowed by the central government to raise finances at competitive rates through bond issuances under Section 54EC of the Income Tax Act. These bonds allow investors to secure tax exemption on the capital gains earned on the sale of assets and are open for subscription throughout the year. NHAI completed construction of 80.44% of its targeted stretches by end-January in FY’17 and achieved construction efficiency of 6.57km/day. Although the pace of highway construction grew 20.7% on-year in FY’17, it is still lower than 7.8km per day achieved in FY’13. The rating agency is of the view that the pace of construction will accelerate in coming years due to the sustained focus of the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways on this sector, award of most of new road projects on the engineering, procurement, and construction (EPC) or hybrid annuity mode (HAM), and the renewed interest shown by the private sector in road projects after the exit route was relaxed under the public private partnership model. Meanwhile, Ministry of Road Transport and Highways missed its target of awarding 25,000 km and was able to achieve only about 8,000 km. John Havlicek Womens Jersey
In a big infrastructure boost, 871 km of the Brahmaputra in Assam to be dredged
In a bid to further give a boost to development in Assam, a total of 871 km of the mighty Brahmaputra in Assam will be dredged. It is learnt that the Centre will bear the expenditure. A senior official of the Inland Water Transport department said that a survey of 300 km of the Brahmaputra has been completed so far by the state PWD department for dredging of the river, said while participating in an All India Radio News talk show last night.BD Choudhury said help of experts will be taken for the dredging. The Inland Water Transport director said the dredging will bring opportunities to Assam as the state will get access to Chittagong port in Bangladesh benefiting 54 lakh people in the state involved in the water transport system, besides tourism getting a boost through improved water transport system.He said water taxi service will be introduced in Guwahati this year and the World Bank has sanctioned Rs 1000 crore for the development of Inland water transport in Assam. An expressway will be constructed along the river after dredging, Choudhury added.Dredging would primarily emphasize on erosion control, sediment management, and flood control and the whole process would be carried out in line with the hydrological character of the Brahmaputra, the statement said. Considering the annual silt load of Brahmaputra, water carrying capacity of the river has been reduced to an extent causing floods in the state when there was incessant rains.Dredging is very important and look what happened in Kashmir because Jhelum was not dredged properly. But, in cases where engineering science needs to be applied, dredging becomes important as without the application of dredging one will not be able to channelize the construction of the requisite edifices properly. Only by making adequate and correct usage of dredging tools and by dredging the right amount of underwater silt and compositions, have a lot of excellent constructions been done so as to be marveled by people across the world. Pedro Martinez Womens Jersey
M&As in road sector pick up over easier exit norms: Icra
The country relaxed the exit policy for road projects under public-private partnership (PPP) model in May 2015. The move is showing results, with a higher amount of deals seen in the road sector in the last two years, according to rating agency ICRA Ltd. The rise in deals, however, may not have brought cheer to a good number of road projects’ sponsors as the ICRA data suggest 31 per cent of the deals in the last two years were made at a loss to the investor. “In about 31 per cent of the transactions, the return to the developers is negative, indicating loss on investment. Developers with a weak credit profile are the ones who disposed of their assets at a loss as liquidity took precedence over profit-making for them,” said K Ravichandran, senior vice-president and group head, corporate ratings, ICRA. On Wednesday, the rating agency said, “Sponsors in around 20 road assets involving a total cost of Rs 12,327 crore have monetised their assets as opposed to around Rs 7,000 crore in the preceding 50 months.” The report attributed the rise to relaxation seen in the exit policy for road projects. In May 2015, the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs (CCEA) relaxed the exit policy for projects awarded before 2009, allowing 100 per cent equity divestment by the developers as against 74 per cent earlier. Of the 20 road assets sold, three were state road projects and the remaining are national highway projects. “Of 17 national highway projects, 16 were awarded before 2009 and are the direct beneficiaries of the policy decision on relaxation of the exit policy for projects awarded before 2009 in May 2015,” ICRA said in its note. ICRA added the relaxation in the policy not only attracted private equity players that are more comfortable when they own 100 per cent stake in the projects, but also enabled the unlocking of additional 26 per cent of the developers’ equity invested in about 5,600 km of national highway projects, awarded under PPP. “This could result in freeing up of around Rs 4,500 crore of equity, which could support equity contribution towards the construction of 1,500 km of national highways in PPP mode,” according to ICRA. The report named Brookfield Asset Management (Canada), Canadian Pension Funds, Macquarie (Australia), I Squared capital (USA, Cube Highways), Abertis Infraestructuras (Spain) and IDFC Alternatives as the major investors currently looking for assets in the sector. There is a strong case for these funds to look at road assets as Ravichandran in the ICRA note added,”The ones with highest returns were secondary sale transactions wherein the sponsors are private equity investors. With the increase in WPI and the continued healthy growth in traffic, the toll collections are expected to grow by 10-11% over the next two years.” ICRA expects the asset sale transactions to gather further momentum as the valuations have improved following a favourable outlook on toll collections and decline in interest rates. Shubham Jain, Vice President and Sector Head, Corporate Ratings, points out those who might gain from this improved momentum for asset sale are projects with at least five to seven years of operational track record. “Projects awarded before 2009 are ideal candidates for the asset sale. The M&A opportunities in the road sector are the highest among various infrastructure sub-sectors with around 88 operational National Highways projects totalling 7,192 km with a total project cost of Rs.69,327 crore and median operational track record of four years,” Jain said. Paul Kariya Authentic Jersey