India looks at ways to use growing toll revenue

India’s ministry of road transport and highways has embarked on an exercise to see if the government can build more roads through its own resources using the revenue from toll collection. The ministry and the National Highways Authority of India are both flush with cash as more roads have come under tolling. Officials are considering moving away from public-private partnerships until economic conditions improve. Instead they are considering cash-contracts for new road construction and leveraging debt bas
April 10, 2014 Read time: 2 mins
RSSIndia’s ministry of road transport and highways has embarked on an exercise to see if the government can build more roads through its own resources using the revenue from toll collection.

The ministry and the 4855 National Highways Authority of India are both flush with cash as more roads have come under tolling. Officials are considering moving away from public-private partnerships until economic conditions improve. Instead they are considering cash-contracts for new road construction and leveraging debt based on the toll revenue.

Since 2004, the length of toll roads has increased from 1,826 kilometres to 6,660 kilometres for public-funded projects and from 70.35 kilometres to 6,585 kilometres for Build-Operate-Transfer (BOT) projects. This has led to a 700 per cent increase in total toll collection in the period 2004-2005 to 2012-2013. About 63 per cent of this revenue comes from public-funded projects.

Officials say the growth in toll revenue means they have enough money to go ahead with road projects using their own resources.  They also plan to deploy more toll roads to maximise earnings and plough the revenue back into road construction.
Enforcement

For more information on companies in this article

Related Content

  • Carbon finance delivers critical support to mass transit schemes
    February 2, 2012
    David Crawford investigates carbon finance in transport. World Bank carbon finance grants are delivering critical support to major mass transit deployments in emerging and developing economies. Only recently operative in the transport sector, the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM, see panel) is designed to generate additional income streams and improve internal rates of return on projects funded from public- and private-sector sources.
    Read More
  • Diverse development of tolling business models
    April 25, 2013
    A diversity of tolling business models offers a wider toolbox of highway finance options, as the IBTTA’s Patrick Jones explains. The business models for America’s tolled highways have gone through several different evolutions over the last 75 years, reflecting a succession of shifts in transportation policy and politics, financing and funding models, urban patterns, customer needs, and technology. And with more and more decision-makers expressing renewed interest in tolling, it’s that very diversity that ma
    Read More
  • IBTTA congratulates Anthony Foxx on his confirmation as DOT Secretary
    June 28, 2013
    The International Bridge, Tunnel and Turnpike Association (IBTTA) congratulated Anthony Foxx after the US Senate voted to confirm him as the next Secretary of the US Department of Transportation. Patrick D Jones, executive director and CEO of the worldwide association representing toll facility owners and operators and the businesses that serve them, said: “IBTTA congratulates Secretary Foxx on his confirmation today as the next US Secretary of Transportation. Secretary Foxx’s leadership comes at a time whe
    Read More
  • Governors urge Congress to act on transportation funding
    January 31, 2014
    The National Transportation Coalition, a US bipartisan group of governors, is calling on Congress to take immediate action to avoid a looming national crisis – the expiration of national highway funding. Seventeen Governors have signed a letter urging congressional members to act and avoid a potential nationwide transportation funding crisis. The Highway Trust Fund, the funding mechanism that drives the US investment in transportation infrastructure, is facing its fifth revenue shortfall since 2008. Mo
    Read More

Highlighted Content