India's Largest Database on New Projects
To
check revenue leakage from toll collection, the government is planning to make
the same agency responsible for toll collection and maintenance. The agency will
be awarded work through competitive bidding on the basis of
operate-maintain-transfer (OMT).
At
present, operation and maintenance of independent toll audit systems and actual
collection are done by two different agencies. In 90% of the cases, toll
collection was being sponsored by the Directorate General of Resettlement (DGR).
DGR is an inter-service organisation functioning directly under the ministry of
defence. For the remaining 10%, the agency was selected through an auction
system.
The
toll collection agency will deposit the collections on behalf of the National
Highways Authority of India (NHAI). In return, NHAI will pay them a monthly sum
for their services. The operations and maintenance agency, in the present
system, is selected through a standard bidding system.
Under
the new system, a single agency will be responsible for both works, and will be
selected through competitive bidding on the basis of the highest upfront payment
the agency is willing to make to NHAI. The latter has selected OMT as the
financing model.
This
will check leakage in toll collection since the agency will have to recover its
costs. The government is in the process of finalising the bidding document and
it should be finalised within the next six months.
There
are nearly 60 toll plazas across the country at the moment and the figure is
likely to go up with the government giving highest priority to
build-operate-transfer (BOT) toll projects.
Source: Economic Times