National priority highway projects still in low gear

KATHMANDU, DEC 07 -Spending on national priority highway projects has been very slow in the first four months of the fiscal year even though the budget was issued on time. Delayed announcement of the government’s annual financial plan has been blamed for the repeated failure to spend budgeted funds leading to development projects being stalled.

According to officials, the Postal Highway project has been able to spend only Rs 85.1 million out of its budget of Rs 2.21 billion. Spending on other national pride highway s-Mid-Hill Highway and North South Corridor-has also been nominal over the period. The Mid-Hill Highway project spent Rs 273.4 million out of its allocation of Rs 1.92 million.

The Department of Roads said that the North-South Corridor project had barely spent Rs 80 million out of the budgeted Rs 510 million. Likewise, the Kathmandu-Tarai Fast Track road project has not been able to spend a rupee out of the allocated Rs 500 million. The slow expenditure during the period mid-July to mid-November has cast doubts over the government’s targeted spending. The Ministry of Finance has also expressed concern over the low capital expenditure.

However, department officials said that they were optimistic about meeting the target. According to them, there has been little expenditure as the projects were in the phase of issuing tender notices, approving contracts and signing agreements.

“We have expected 85-90 percent expenditure this fiscal,” said Rajesh Kumar Yadav, chief of the Project Monitoring and Evaluation Unit of the department. In the last fiscal year, the department had reported 76.4 percent budget expenditure.

A total of Rs 33 billion has been provided to the department to execute over 60 projects. The department said that progress on the physical development front was expected to increase this fiscal as the work of inviting tenders and signing agreements was progressing rapidly. Construction work is expected to go into full swing during the second half of this fiscal after all the formalities are finished.

As of the first four months, the Mid-Hill Highway project has completed track opening on 1.5 km out of the remaining 5-km length of the western section. Balaram Mishra, project manager of the project’s Western Section, said they would be completing the track opening work by mid-December this year.

The project’s Western and Eastern sections have completed track upgrading on a total stretch of 20 km against the target of 85 km set for the current fiscal year.

Of the total length of 62 km targeted for blacktopping during the current fiscal year, the Mid-Hill project has completed only 2 km.

The Mid-Hill, Postal Highway and North-South Corridor projects are being implemented by the department while the Fast Track project is directly supervised by the Ministry of Physical Infrastructure.

While the government has not been able to appoint a developer for the Fast Track as potential Indian firms have walked away, land acquisition and distribution of compensation is in progress, said Ananta Acharya, chief of the Fast Track road project. He added that compensation distribution for the alignment falling in Kathmandu would be done within a month.

Regarding the Postal Highway, the department has planned to complete construction of 20 bridges in the current fiscal year. It said that currently 56 bridges were under construction.

An official at the Ministry of Physical Infrastructure and Transport said that bridge building was progressing as per plan, but that work on the roads was advancing at a snail’s pace in the eastern sector because the Indian contractors were working slow.

“There is slow progress in road construction in sectors like Janakpur and Biratnagar,” the official said. The road is being built with the assistance of India. Nepal is responsible for building the bridges and making available the required land.

Meanwhile, the North-South Corridor project, which consists of the Kali Gandaki, Koshi and Karnali highway s, has opened 9.8 km of track on the Hilsa-Simikot section of Karnali Highway against the target of 24.5 km for this year.

Gopal Prasad Sigdel, chief of the North South Corridor project, said that 6 km of track on the Kali Gandaki Highway had been completed out of the target of 12 km. He added that the Nepal Army would be completing 5 km of track in Gulmi soon.

In the current fiscal year, the project has been assigned to complete 20 km of track opening on the Koshi Highway. However, the department said that it would be hard to meet the target as there has been slow progress in the first three months and the winter season would affect construction for at least the next four months. “Snow on the upper sections of the North-South roads badly affects construction during the winter,” said Sigdel.