NH monetisation has already fetched Rs 26,000 cr: Gadkari

He said while expanding the national highway network is of prime importance to the Centre, greening it is equally important.

The Centre’s move to monetise national highways has already fetched Rs 26,000 crore, as it plans monetisation worth Rs 1.6 lakh crore from the national highways (NHs) over the next four years, Nitin Gadkari, minister for road transport and highways, said.

The government’s overall digitisation drive in running and maintaining the NHs has been helping it in monetisation through toll plazas and fast track systems. The MORTH was looking forward towards creating an additional `lakh km of national highways in phases, Gadkari said at the annual general meeting of the Indian Chamber of Commerce.

He said while expanding the national highway network is of prime importance to the Centre, greening it is equally important.

The draft model concession agreement for PPP has already been made for setting up of passenger rope-way. The government is also looking at sea planes and drone taxis, as alternative mode of passenger transportation.

Putting up solar panels and creating rain water harvesting facilities along the NHs are already on the government’s radar as switching over to alternative fuels like green hydrogen, bio CNG, bio LNG for transportation required investments in retrofit industry, helping conversion of fossil fuel-run vehicles to bio fuel-run vehicles, Gadkari said.

All these initiatives would help in cutting costs of crude imports currently pegged at `8 lakh crore a year. Besides green fuel, the government has also targeted EV charging stations in 600 locations across the NHs in the next five years, Gadkari said, adding the government’s target is to bring down the logistics cost to 10% of the GDP. The government, he said, is seeking new technologies for highway construction with waste materials like waste plastic to make highways less cement and steel intensive to reduce cost of construction.