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The government has lowered the target for the year to 33 km/day from 40 km/day set earlier. This would mean that much less roads will be built in 2021-22, compared with 2020-21, the original pandemic year.

Nitin Gadkari road transport and highways minister Gadkari said in the Rajya Sabha, “Targets for the construction of national highways are finalized on a year-on-year basis. The government has set a target of 12,000 km (for) the current financial year against which 5,118 km which has been constructed as on November 30, 2021,”

The original target was to build 14,600 km of highways in 2021-22, up from 13,327 km constructed in 2020-21.

Construction fell to its lowest in four years to 21.3 km per day during the April-November period of the current fiscal, compared with an average of 25.8 km/day in the same period last fiscal. It was 24 km/day in the comparable period of FY19 and 24.8 in the same period in FY20, both pre-pandemic periods.

The latest statement by the minister also marks a change from an official statement issued on May 1 this year following Gadkari’s address to the Indo-US Partnership Vision summit, where he said, “Shri Gadkari was confident that the ministry for road transport & highways will achieve target of 40 kilometers (per day of highways construction in current fiscal.”