(This story originally appeared in on Feb 06, 2016)

NEW DELHI: Government approved 18 highway development works on Friday totalling about 1,000 km, which will involve around Rs 17,000 crore investment.Earlier this week, the Public Private Project Appraisal Committee (PPPAC) had cleared three national highway projects with a cumulative length of about 300 km.All these works will be awarded by March-end and in fact bids for most of these projects have been called by NHAI and road transport ministry.Till January 31, little over 6,800 km had been awarded and ministry officials claimed that more than 1,300 km works approved this week will be rolled out by the end of this financial year.“We will continue approving the projects every week by the inter-ministerial committee, which is empowered to clear projects costing up to Rs 1,000 crore,” said an official.The panel with representatives from departments such as finance , expenditure and Niti Aayog is headed by road transport secretary Sanjay Mitra.The government has set a target of awarding 10,000 km during this fiscal year. Even if the target is not met, it is evident that the government will better its last year’s achievement of awarding 8,000 km.Mitra said approved projects can be rolled out soon since adequate land is available for these works and there are hardly any cases where environment and forest clearances are required.Out of the 18 approved projects, 11 will be awarded through Hybrid Annuity mode, which was recently approved by the Cabinet.In this case, government will pay back the entire investment in a staggered manner and on the top of this the companies will get 40% of the project cost up front during construction.Six of the approved projects will be undertaken through public funding mode known as EPC and the rest one will be on build operate and transfer (BOT-Toll) mode.The Narendra Modi government has set the ambitious target of building 30 kms of highways daily and to sustain this highway ministry has to continue awarding at least 10,000-12,000 km every year.Till January end, daily construction was around 16 km. Ministry data show that this year’s total construction figure is 4,800 km and the target is to build 6,300 km by March-end.