The Ministry of Road, Transport and Highways on 5 February 2016 cleared 18 highway projects having a cumulative length of 982 km to be built at an estimated cost of Rs 16,614 crore.

These projects, spread across eight states including Rajasthan, Gujarat and Uttar Pradesh, would be awarded in the current fiscal and developed using various models like engineering procure and construction (EPC) and hybrid annuity among others over a period of two to two and a half years from the awarding date to the successful bidders.

As many as 11 projects of the proposed 18, would be developed through the newly-coined hybrid annuity model, in which the government would pay 40 per cent of the project cost in phases. Six projects would be developed through the EPC model and the remaining one using the traditional build–operate–transfer (BOT) model.