NHAI borrowings may shoot up to Rs. 35,000 cr next year.

The National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) will have to sharply increase its borrowing levels to about Rs. 30,000-35,000 crore next year, if it wants to award 3,500 km of roads through the engineering procurement contract (EPC) route in the current fiscal. NHAI has a target to award 5,000 km in the current fiscal, of which 3,500 km will be in EPC mode and 1,500 through public-private partnership (PPP) route. With the PPP projects seeing a muted response since last year, NHAI will have little option but to adopt EPC route where entire projects are funded by the Government.