Infra firms get bullish on roads

Feb 01, 2010

HYDERABAD, Feb. 1: The ambitious agenda of the transport minister, Mr Kamal Nath, has opened a new avenue of business — BOT road projects — for infrastructure companies. The Central government is planning to spend Rs 3.4 lakh crore to build a 37,050 km road network in the country over the next five years.

With the relaxation of land acquistion norms, the infrastructure companies have made a beeline to tap this opportunity. City-based infra firm IVRCL Infra had amalgamated its BOT holding companies with its sister concern IVR Prime, which will focus on bidding for road BOT projects. Meanwhile, Nagarjuna Constructions Company (NCC) has firmed up its plans to get a decent pie of the road network.

In the last 30 days, IVRCL has bagged two road projects — Rs 1,550 crore project in Madhya Pradesh on January 13 and Rs 1,125-crore project in Maharashtra on February 1. "The projects will be executed by separate special purpose vehicles owned by IVR Prime," said Mr E. Sudhir Reddy, the chairman of IVRCL Infra.

NCC, which went shy of road projects, has expressed interest to compete for developing new highways. "We are expecting to bag two or three projects in next five to six months. We will ramp up the share of BOT projects share in our overall order book to 25 per cent. We will also bid for mega projects through an international partner," said the NCC managing director, Mr A. Ranga Raju.

Recently, Mumbai-based Era Infra too bagged Rs 1,660 crore worth road pro-ject, involving four laning of National Highway 58.

Age Correspondent

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