Budget 2022: National Highways to be expanded by 25,000 km in 2022-23, up from 13,327 km in 2020-21
16 ministries to work on integrated infra development, including railways, roads, oil and gas, power, telecom, shipping and aviation.
As part of its mega investment plan, India is set to see its highest addition in National Highways in 2022-23, adding 25,000 kilometers as part of the ambitious, a Rs 100 trillion plan for multi-modal connectivity, finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman lined up in her Budget 2022 speech on Tuesday.
The road network in India has increased substantially in the current fiscal compared to previous years, the Economic Survey 2021-22 said. It said that there has been a consistent increase in the construction of National Highways/roads since 2013-14 with 13,327 km of roads constructed in 2020-21 as compared to 10,237 km in 2019-20, indicating an increase of 30.2 per cent over the previous year. In 2021-22 (till September), 3,824 km of road network were constructed.
Around Rs 20,000 crore will be mobilised through innovative ways of financing to complement the public resources, Sitharaman added.
The Gati Shakti programme includes the expansion of roads, railways, ports, airports, mass transport, waterways and logistics infrastructure. Modi had launched the Gati Shakti master plan in October 2021. As part of the multi-model logistics plan, all these key areas are expected to work together. The roadmap is lined up to drive India’s infrastructure growth for the next 25 years.
The road network of the country consists of National Highways, State Highways, district roads, rural roads, urban roads, and project Roads of over 63.71 lakh km of roads (Provisional) as on March 31 2019, which is the second-largest in the world, after the US with 66.45 lakh km of roads.
