India’s highway development on right track

“Egis has been and will continue to be a key partner in the country’s ambitious highway development programs,” remarks Ashish Tandon, Managing Director, Egis India
 In India, Egis offers end-to-end solutions for all types of road sector projects. This ISO 9001:2008 certified company believes in delivering services with quality and within the stipulated time frames. In an interview with ACE Update, Ashish Tandon shares how Egis has been contributing to the highway development progress of India.
The value of roads and bridges infrastructure in India is projected to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 17.4 per cent over FY12–17. Where would you place your company in this growth zone?Egis in India has had an exposure of about 35-40 per cent to the roads and highways sector over the past decade. However, the rate of growth of the sector within the company has not kept pace with the growth in the other sectors like the metro rail. While numbers showing anticipated annual growth rate for road sector in India reveal a certain trend, we all know that this is highly dependent on policy and banking reforms by the central government. Therefore, Egis is cautious about projecting ambitious growth plans for the sector in India. At the same time, as a strategy, Egis would like to focus equally on other infrastructure sectors like rail, water, aviation and urban infrastructure.
India has the second largest road network in the world at 4.7 million km. How big can India’s road network grow from here in the next 5 years?Addition to the country’s road network is expected to come in the form of two diagrammatically opposite types of roads; namely, high-speed access controlled expressways and village roads for improved connectivity. The rest of the primary and tertiary road network already exists. Most of the proposed projects involve improvement and expansion of this network.
How important is FDI or PPP in the development of roads and bridges infrastructure? The 12th Five-Year Plan envisages whopping 42 per cent investments in the infrastructure sector to come from private players. This underlines the inherent significance of private investments contributing to the success of India’s infrastructure success story during the plan period. For various reasons, well documented in the public domain, PPP projects in the highways sector have taken a beating over the last couple of years. The present central government is seized with the challenge of implementing certain key conducive measures to bring private players back into the main stream. While FDI in the road sector is useful and has been present for more than a decade now, it is not a major contributory factor for the pickup in the PPP road projects.
What are the most essential services you have for this sector? Why are these projects and services essential?Egis in India offers end-to-end solutions for all types of road sector projects. These solutions begin with strategic selection of roads to be taken up for improvement, preparation of feasibility study, detailed engineering design, procurement assistance, road asset management, institutional strengthening management information system (MIS), construction monitoring and supervision, as well as operation and maintenance. Egis works with both public sector clients as well as private clients in India to deliver state-of-the-art technical advisory services, covering the entire gamut of a highway project cycle.
The Indian government plans to develop a total of 66,117 km of roads under different programmes and has set an objective of building 30 km of road a day from 2016. How can your organisation add value to these programmes?Egis has been continuously contributing to the highway development progress of the country through more than hundred executed and underdevelopment projects in different parts of the country. Egis India, as ISO 9001:2008 certified company, believes in delivering services with quality and within the stipulated time frames. To this effect, Egis has been and will continue to be a key partner in the country’s ambitious highway development programs.

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