The government of India is busy tackling the GST woes and has ended up losing a lot of road kilometres this year. The disruptive goods and services tax has damaged the bidding process of NHAI or the National Highways Authority of India which awards thousand of road kilometres every year.
However, in the month of February and march the process would be busy and would award anywhere between 6000 to 8000 km. Earlier the union minister for road transport & highways, shipping and river development Nitin Gadkari thought to bid contracts for over more than 25000 km in 2017-18, but at the modesty only awarded 2697 km at the end of January.
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The reason behind this slow pace is ought to be goods and services tax, as the change in taxation structure required to be chalked out before figuring all the cost of input beforehand. The preparation of detailed project reports is also one step to be taken before any further decision. As the number of projects was lower than before and it seems that due to GST, there was a drought-like situation in the road mapping department.
Many of the construction companies have come forward with the reason of delay and stated many of them against the government itself. As in many cases, the land was not acquired which made the process much slower. It is now hoped that this year there will be abundant project bidding with around 6000 to 7000 km road project of approximately 70000 to 80000 crores.
