The state government is unlikely to take funds from the Japanese agency for funding the construction of its ambitious 693-km-long Mumbai-Nagpur Super Expressway.
The state government is unlikely to take funds from the Japanese agency for funding the construction of its ambitious 693-km-long Mumbai-Nagpur Super Expressway.
The Japanese agency named Japanese International Cooperation Agency (JICA) had held talks with chief minister Devendra Fadnavis back in August 2015 were it had shown a keen interest in funding the Mumbai-Nagpur Super Expressway.
However, the funding proposal did not go well with the Maharashtra State Road Development Corporation (MSRDC), which is the implementing agency of the expressway.
According to MSRDC officials, it is taking lessons from the experience of other agencies such as that of MMRDA with JICA, where relying on Japanese funds had delayed projects like the Mumbai Trans Harbour Link and the Colaba-Seepz Metro-3 corridor.
“The proposed Mumbai-Nagpur Super-communication Expressway is a huge project and we will need to raise funds from various agencies. We are in talks with various national and multilateral lenders like the Asian Development Bank and the World Bank, among others. We may also seek central funds for the project, which we will take up on an EPC model,” said SM Ramchandani, MSRDC, joint managing director.
Under the EPC model, the contractor is legally responsible for completing the project under some fixed predetermined timeline.
The MSRDC has earlier claimed that it is not exploring the proposal by JICA, as they have to meet the deadline of 2019 set by chief minister. Thus, the corporation claimed that it has fast-tracked the work.
“We will not approach JICA for the Nagpur Expressway project. We want to start work on this project as soon as possible. We have experienced it in the past that the JICA takes a long time to give their approvals and we do not have that much time to wait,” Mr Ramchandani said.
Further, for the eight-lane expressway, which will cost around '30,000 crore, the MSRDC has closed the financial and technical bids of the three out of five packages in which the detailed project report (DPR) for the expressway will be prepared. The DPR, if the MSRDC is to be believed, will be prepared in the next four months.
The proposed super-communication expressway is expected to play an important role in the economic growth and development of backward, drought-hit regions of the state.
