Union Minister for Road Transport and Highways, Nitin Gadkari, has announced a major infrastructure expansion initiative to convert 25,000 to 30,000 km of existing two-lane highways into four lanes at an estimated investment of Rs 10 lakh crore.
Speaking at an event, the Minister emphasised the pivotal role of infrastructure development and to fund this expansion, the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways (MoRTH) will actively promote the Infrastructure Investment Trust (InvIT) model to attract investments from Indian investors. "We will construct highways under the BOT model but for 15 years toll will be collected by the government and we will give money to them (concessionaires) on an annuity basis,” he said.
The InvIT model, similar to mutual funds, is designed to pool capital from investors and allocate it to infrastructure projects that generate long-term cash flows. This approach is expected to mobilise large-scale domestic funding while offering investors a stable return. The government is working on revising the build-operate-transfer (BOT) model, particularly the annuity variant, to make it more efficient and attractive to private developers.