Indian govt is keen to award Rs 60,000 crore highway projects. Private sector, are you listening?

Under the Hybrid Annuity Model (HAM), the Indian government is going to award projects worth around Rs 60,000 crore.

The model has been able to revive the interest of private players in the sector and under HAM, the road transport and highways ministry will award at least 6,000 km of highway projects.

In the next financial year, the road transport ministry led by Nitin Gadkari is mulling to give projects worth Rs1.5 lakh crore and has sought budgetary support of Rs 85,000 crore from the finance ministry for the same.

"Given the lack of appetite for PPP projects, it would be extremely challenging to achieve the road building target without adopting mitigating financial instruments. The government wouldn't have found any takers for Build Operate Transfer (BOT) model," Jaijit Bhattacharya, Partner, KPMG, told ET.

The target of increasing highway network from 96,000 km to 1.5 lakh km has been increased to 1.75 lakh km.