Road Ministry's Bharatmala Phase 1 proposal gets Centre's all-clear

The Centre approves Road Ministry's Bharatmala Phase I proposal. This proposal covers expanding the existing 40,000 km (kilometres) of highways and building 28,400 km of new highways.

The project in the next five years would generate 32 crore man days and push economic activity across the country, reports TOI.

Bharatmala is an umbrella scheme for road, highways, shipping projects covering border areas, coastal region, ports, religious and tourist places. It is one of the key projects of the current NDA government with an estimated investment of Rs 10 lakh crore which will subsume unfinished parts of the National Highways Development Project (NHDP).

Sources told CNBC-TV18 that the first phase entails an investment of Rs 3.5 lakh crore and 44 economic corridors would be developed under the ambitious project. The Road Ministry is moving forward with 20 economic corridors in the first phase.

The corridor will enable faster movement of cargo traffic with four-lane roads between the two economic corridors.

The average distance covered by a truck daily in India is 250-300 km in comparison to 700-800 km in developed countries because of bad road conditions, narrow width and the bottleneck at key junctions. The rollout of the radio frequency identification (RFID) smart tag tolling with improved road network will lessen the travel and reduce logistics cost.

The report said that 70 percent of the work will be funded by the government as demand from private investment is not there.However, the target looks ambitious as the NHAI Chairman Deepak Kumar has told CNBC-TV18 earlier this year. They have revised down the annual target it had set during the year from 10,000 km to 5,500 km of highways.