L&T to convert Nagpur into country’s first large-scale integrated Smart City

August 19, 2016

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Heavy engineering and construction major Larsen & Toubro has been chosen by the Maharashtra government to convert Nagpur into the country’s first large-scale integrated Smart City. In the first phase, L&T’s Smart World & Communication business vertical, which is a part of L&T Construction, will cover laying of 1,200 km of optical fiber network backbone in the City of Oranges, creating 136 city wifi hot-spots at key locations, establishing 100 digital interactive kiosks and developing city surveillance systems with 3,800 IP-based cameras.

 

Further, as an avant-garde endeavor, the city has identified a strip of approximately 6 km (from Japanese Garden Square to Orange City Hospital Square) to be developed as a ‘Smart Strip’ with state-of-the-art systems powered by smart ICT interventions like smart transport, solid waste management, smart lighting, etc. This is to be leveraged in a phased manner to ultimately cover the entire city.

 

“After Jaipur, this is the most significant step in the country’s journey towards establishing smart cities and we are delighted to be participating in transforming Nagpur into one,” said S N Subrahmanyan, Deputy Managing Director and President, Larsen & Toubro. “As a master systems integrator, we will provide leading-edge technology solutions including high-end analytics, mobile surveillance and high-tech tools like drones,” he added. L&T’s Smart World business has executed the smart city project in Jaipur and is executing India’s largest city surveillance project comprising 6,000 cameras across 1,500+ locations in Mumbai. Projects are also underway in Delhi, Lucknow and Hyderabad, the company said.

Road Projects worth INR 37000 Cr coming up in the North-East

August 16, 2016

The government has informed law makers that there are 197 road projects that are being developed in the North Eastern region of the country under the watch of Ministry of Road Transport and Highways (MoRTH). The total length and sanctioned cost of these projects are 4320.95 km and Rs 37691.05 crore respectively. This was stated by Jitendra Singh, minister of state for Development of North Eastern Region in a written reply in the Rajya Sabha. “Government is, in fact, giving special attention to infrastructure development projects, such as, road, rail, communication, and telecom network in the North Eastern Region,” the Minister said in his statement.

 

Apart from the road projects, 20 major railway projects comprising 13 new lines with a length of 2,624 km, costing Rs 52,030 crore have also been taken up in the North Eastern Region. “An expenditure of Rs 2,1336 crore has been incurred on these projects up to March, 2016. An outlay of Rs 5,040 crore has been provided for 2016-17 for these projects and for the residual liabilities of some completed projects,” the minister informed the members.

 

In addition, the North Eastern Council (NEC) is implementing 715 various developmental projects in North Eastern States, which are under way at a total approved cost of Rs 7,14,864.98 lakh. Ministry of Rural Development is providing assistance to respective state governments under the Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana (PMGSY) programme.

IIT-KGP to suggest technology for maintenance-free highways

August 16, 2016

Hyderabad Outer Ring Road

Maintenance of the country’s national highways for a longer period could get a new lease of life with the prestigious Indian Institute of Technology-Kharagpur set to embark on an ambitious project which will suggest technologies for maintenance-free highways. The step is also seen as environment friendly as it will need lesser natural resources. At present, the construction of these highways requires a monolithic (in-situ) layer of cement concrete normally 300 mm thick, laid continuously over the prepared surface. The idea is innovation of technology to optimise the design of concrete pavement in its traditional form which can facilitate faster construction at much cheaper costs.

 

The National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) and IIT-Kharagpur signed a pact recently for a research project to develop a technology to construct long-lasting maintenance-free highways in the country. “The duration of the research project is three years and NHAI has paid Rs 1.25 crore for the project, excluding cost of construction of trial pavement section,” NHAI said. NHAI and IIT Kharagpur will develop a technology to construct Panelled Cement Concrete (Pre-fabricated in a small panel size) which can replace the design of construction of existing cement concrete road.

 

The common experience in the national highways are that it is prone to damage and needs frequent maintenance due to adverse climatic conditions such as rain and hot weather since they are generally paved with bituminous (asphaltic concrete) material produced from refineries. To overcome this problem, the government has recently announced a policy for the construction of concrete pavements for all major highways due to their longevity and maintenance-free life. “The paneled concrete pavement laid on a lean concrete base can fulfill the Government of India’s dream of providing long-lasting maintenance-free pavements at a cost at par with those of asphalt pavements,” NHAI said.

ICICI to issue 4 lakh ETC tags by March 2017

August 10, 2016

ICICI Bank – the largest private sector lender of the country – aims to issue four lakh electronic toll collection tags by March 2017. The private sector lender is the first to launch and implement an inter-operable Electronic Toll Collection (ETC) platform on national highways. The bank is also targeting to record three million transactions by the end of the current financial year. The bank has made ‘Electronic Toll Collection’ live at 343 toll locations across major national highways of the country, which covers over 90 per cent of the tolled national highway network.

 

Chanda Kochhar, MD & CEO, ICICI Bank said, “Currently, we have made this service live across 343 toll locations in the country, thus covering over 90% of the tolled national highway network. We are closely working with the Road Transport & Highways Ministry, NHAI (National Highway Authority of India) and IHMCL (Indian Highways Management Company Limited) to cover more highways under ETC in the near future.”

 

“ICICI Bank is delighted to be associated with the implementation of Electronic Toll Collection (ETC) on national highways. We were the first bank in the country to launch this innovative service and have successfully set benchmarks that are now being leveraged to create national standards for inter-operability between all banks,” Ms Kochhar added. Overall, ICICI Bank has issued over 30,000 FASTags which are currently in use for electronic toll collection. The bank was the first to launch this service on the Mumbai – Vadodara corridor of NH8 in 2013.

 

FASTag is a simple to use, reloadable tag which enables automatic deduction of toll charges and lets you pass through the toll plaza without stopping for the cash transaction. FASTag is linked to a prepaid account from which the applicable toll amount is deducted. The tag employs Radio-frequency Identification (RFID) technology and is affixed on the vehicle’s windscreen after the tag account is active. A vehicle with the ‘FASTag’ can use the dedicated lanes on either side of the toll plaza to avoid long queues in the cash lanes of the toll plazas.

 

Hybrid Annuity Model makes inroads into BOT projects

August 9, 2016

Road builders who have shown an interest in the new hybrid annuity model (HAM) to build roads are making a killing with profit margins in excess of 20%. This compares much more favourably to even build, operate, transfer BOT) projects where margins usually range between 16-18%. Rohan Suryavanshi, Head, Planning and Strategy, Dilip Buildcon, said, “Yes, the margins are good, with respect to the projects we have bagged so far under the new model.”   “Most of the companies are building in their margins during the construction phase into the project cost itself, resulting in high internal rate of return on equity,” an analyst explained. While this is not usually done in EPC contracts, the fact that HAM is a new model with lesser numbers of bidders in the fray (compared to EPC projects) has resulted in some opportunistic bidding with companies building in extra margins into the cost of the project. However, said the analyst, “Prima facie, the equity returns are about 10% or so which is what the government has intended with this model. But, obviously, no player is going to put in equity to earn just 10%.”   So far, the bigger and more experienced companies have not yet bid for these projects. Shailesh Sawa, Director, Business Development & Strategy, Essar Projects, said, “We are open to considering various options if the project is promising, with a reasonable risk profile and good returns.” Sawa added that he is evaluating a number of upcoming highway projects that are being tendered on the EPC mode. Sudhir Hoshing, Joint Managing Director, IRB Infrastructure, said that since this was a new model, a new category of players is emerging. “The bidding has already become very competitive. We’ll wait and see how this plays out.”   MEP Infrastructure is one among the new players bidding for HAM projects and has bagged about six projects under the new model. Analysts believe that this sort of interest to become first-time asset owners is representative of a greater enthusiasm among new and smaller companies. However, another CEO of a leading road developer said that he was apprehensive of certain clauses in the new model. “Where the HAM agreement really fails is in ensuring a clear and unwavering definition of the revenue stream for the project. The revenue stream is subject to too many potential adjustments along the way, both during construction and O&M periods. These concerns affect the sanctity of the revenue stream and destroy the element of certainty normally expected and associated with an annuity model,” he said, asking not to be identified.   The National Highways Authority of India has published a list of 6,600 km it intends to award this year, and the ministry, too, is working on a complete list of projects it intends to award to achieve the overall target of 25,000 km for FY17. Of the total, the ministry has a stated intent to award 85-90% of projects under HAM and EPC, skewed towards the former.   The HAM was conceived to moderate risks faced by highway developers and provide financial support during construction. Projects under this model were slow to take off with the first few projects seeing just two-three bidders and roughly 400 km being awarded since the model was approved by the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs in January this year. Under this model, 40% of the project cost is provided by the government as construction support to the developer in five equal instalments, based on the targeted completion of the road project. The remaining 60% balance is provided as annuity payments over the concession period. The toll is collected by the government, relieving the developer of this politically sensitive issue.   In such projects, developers are also offered 80% prior land acquisition and forest clearances. The model was first proposed by the Road Transport and Highways Ministry in February 2015 and it came into effect exactly a year later.

SNCF to move industrious train project under way

August 3, 2016

SNCF (National Society of French Railways), France’s state-owned railway company who are also the international consultants for the Delhi-Chandigarh semi-high speed train project, have completed the initial round of feasibility studies for the project. SNCF is also studying the way forward for the renovation of two stations – at Ambala and Ludhiana.

SNCF has prepared three options which have been presented to the Indian government. The priority in the first scenario was given to minimum investments while the second option focused on completing the train journey between Ambala and Chandigarh in just two hours. The third priority was given to a possibility where the train could achieve speeds of 200 kmph. With the preparation of the three scenarios, the end of the first phase of studies is complete.

SNCF’s Asia Director, Philippe Lorand, said that SNCF would now jointly work with the Indian government representatives to help them understand the different options and the associated costs with each option. “We hope that by the time of the second steering committee meeting by the end of September, Indian Railways will be in a position to select one of the scenarios with which they want to go forward and for which they would want us to prepare the documentation so that they could launch the tenders.” He added, “The work of the steering committee is not just to select one of the options but also to tell us how they want to tweak their requirements within the budgets they have.”

On the Indian side, the steering committee members are headed by Alok Kansal, Divisional Railway Manager, South Eastern Central Railway.

The study was financed both by France and India and launched in January. The background to this is the agreement signed between the two countries when the French President visited India in February 2013, and last year when Prime Minister Narendra Modi was in Paris in April.

Smooth Roads and Long Journeys

June 22, 2016

NPCI A P Hota 

 

Meet AP Hota, MD&CEO, National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), the man overseeing the setting up of a nationwide payment infrastructure that will enable barrier-free tolling. Over the last five years, NPCI has travelled a fair distance itself, starting from a single service of switching of inter-bank ATM transactions. Today, the range of services has grown to cheque clearing, immediate payments, automated clearing house, electronic benefit transfer and a domestic card payment network named RuPay. Its long-term goals are to get every Indian to start making digital transactions in every sphere of life, reducing their dependency on ATMs.

 

Excerpts from an interview:

 

 

What is the relevance of NPCI to infrastructure?

NPCI falls into the category of financial market infrastructure. Our infrastructure is not visible to the naked eye. The financial market infrastructure, however, is huge. Within this, NPCI plays the role of a utility. We are like a utility to the banks wherein we facilitate over 20 million transactions daily.

 

Surely, such volumes require a robust data connectivity network?

Yes, the most important challenge is the telecommunication and data networks that we face in our work to connect banks and to connect people. While all the major banks are already connected, there are banks in the remote areas that cannot connect because the data grid technologies are not in place. There is an attempt to make mobile banking available and pervasive. However, only the short-message service (SMS) and call services are available throughout the country, not the data grid services. This is where the government’s optic fiber network, whenever it gets rolled out, will be useful since only then, financial services will be able to ride on that network.

 

Moreover, in financial services, we need 24*7 power. This is why companies are shifting their data centres to Hyderabad because, possibly, the availability of power there is much better. For instance, beyond Vashi in Navi Mumbai, uninterrupted power is not available. This is why nobody wants to put up their data centres close to Mumbai because if they do that, their data centres will have to run on diesel generators and that will be much more expensive. Chennai, Bengaluru and Hyderabad are preferable destinations in comparison.

 

Even where you do have connectivity, India ranks pretty low on speed and quality of connection. Comment.

This is true. Even when someone is expected in our office, and we need to provide a demo, we have to be very careful to see that the mobile network is really working properly! Since connectivity is a problem, we may have to go to certain corners or areas where the signals are stronger to get the link. This is the scenario in a city like Mumbai in the middle of its new financial hub. Nonetheless, it is improving and there hasn’t been a serious issue that has affected any transaction in the real world. However, if we want to integrate the whole country with a digital payment system, the optic fiber network is something we will have to look at for this purpose. A great thrust is coming on our payments system on mobile devices.

 

How are you dealing with this?

The challenge is with respect to the data network. There are quite a few dark spots in the country where there is zero connectivity. There is no mobile connectivity even. We have come out with a solution which is that we use the USSD-based financial transaction. This stands for unstructured supplementary service data and it means that wherever the voice grid link is available, USSD also works. This channel is not a data channel but almost like a voice grid channel but on which messages can travel. It is possible at least for the GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications) phones. USSD is a capability built into the GSM standard. This is already in operation with almost a million transactions daily but for such a large country, a million transactions are also hardly anything!

 

Are you involved in the e-tolling project for setting up the clearing house?

The National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) has given us the responsibility to build the clearing house for e-tolling. In this system, we are envisaging a barrier-free tolling system. For this, at the back-end, the money transaction will happen through us.

 

Sometime back too, this had been envisaged. What happened?
What had happened then was that some toll booths were given to ICICI Bank and Axis Bank. ICICI Bank made it operational in about 160 toll booths and issued about 300,000 cards or so. Many of them are not working right now. A particular area was also given to each of the banks and they were not allowed to infringe on each other’s areas. Similarly, in the south, few areas were given to Axis Bank. However, Axis Bank did not start the project at all. ICICI Bank began but it was nominal. Now, however, there is a plan to make it inter-operable. In this new system, all banks will be able to issue cards. If this happens, and the data needs to go to different banks, there will have to be an interbank transaction. That will be done through the clearing house. We have started the work of building the clearing house. We are awaiting the Reserve Bank’s approval of the clearing system as this is a payment system with multiple banks. We expect the time-line to be around July or August. Initially, around 300 toll booths would start this off. It is already there in 160 booths by ICICI as mentioned earlier but they will have to slightly revamp their process to align with the new system. The toll booths have already been told to ready themselves along the Golden Quadrilateral, to start with. This can then be taken forward on the state highways.

 

Initially, they have mandated only one lane on each side. Gradually, they will increase this as and when the cards are issued in bigger numbers. The numbers of electronic toll collection (ETC) lanes will also go up simultaneously. In two-three years from now, most of the lanes will be ETC lanes. The cards will be sold mostly through the toll booths.

 

Do the cards issued by banks need to be displayed or would it be done via the license plates?

It will be an RFID card, and not with the license plate.

 

In the future, do we have to display these cards as a norm?

Yes, because one could probably tamper with number plates leading to problems in reconciliation. Moreover, all new cars released to the market also carry a chip with certain functionalities that can be leveraged. However, we are not adopting this like in many other countries. I do not know if the cars in India have this device with an RFID tag but nonetheless, the majority of the cars out there today are old cars. They would not be having this device so it is better to go for the card system issued by banks.

 

What are the new products that you are bringing to the market?

Quite a few, actually. One of them is the unified payments interface (UPI) which is an improvement over the current real-time money transfer. Sending money in real-time 24*7 via any channel was already there. Now, we have improved it by making it real-time collect. Earlier, it was only real-time sending. Also, earlier, for sending money, you needed the bank account number and other details. Now, I can just ask you a financial address. Suppose I want to send money to you and you have already registered under the new system, say – karan@hdfc – I can send money to this address. HDFC Bank will translate this to make the deposit in the appropriate account. So, the financial address is email-like.

 

The second product that we expect to introduce by the end of June is the bill payments infrastructure. Currently, we pay most of our utility bills mostly in cash or cheque. Therefore, we are setting up a national level bill payments infrastructure.

 

The third product is the e-tolling that I talked about earlier. The fourth product is tap-and-go payment. We are trying this out in Bengaluru with the public bus commute system. People can just tap a device and walk into the bus and tap it again before dismounting. These systems were tried earlier in different cities but they were not scalable. Now, there is a national specification and these would be rolled out based on some common standards. In fact, the name already proposed by the Honourable Urban Development Minister Venkaiah Naidu for this card is the National Common Mobility Card. This is proposed to work for buses, trains, taxis and even the metro. Hopefully, our project will begin in Bengaluru soon, followed by Kochi Metro which will be a full-fledged roll-out. In Bengaluru, the card will be issued by only Axis Bank but in Kochi, there will be multiple cards.

 

We also have a plan for coming out with RUPay credit cards.

 

What is your vision and your long-term targets?

People should be primarily transacting digitally, for every need, not relying on ATMs all the time. The banks are the custodians of people’s money as well as the prepaid issuers and we aim to facilitate their transactions. If people transact digitally, there will be less movement of cash and consequently, less printing of cash. The government will therefore, save a significant amount of money. The Reserve Bank of India is supportive of our initiatives and the government is also extremely enthusiastic about it.

National highways to have basic amenity centres every 25 km

March 8, 2016

Driving long distance on India’s national highways may no longer be a taxing affair with the government planning to provide amenities such as washrooms, drinking water and multi-utility shops every 25 km. (HT File Photo)

Planning an inter-city road trip but anxious about the absence of basic facilities along the road?

Driving long distance on India’s national highways may no longer be a taxing affair with the government planning to provide amenities such as washrooms, drinking water and multi-utility shops every 25 km.

A larger complex of services — rest areas for drivers, washrooms, bathing areas, restaurants, big multi-utility shops and adequate parking facilities — will be built every 50 kilometres.

The road transport ministry has unveiled a draft policy to standardise highway wayside amenities that are scarce and unevenly distributed, unlike other countries that have a uniform standard of facilities.

“In some highway stretches you have good restaurants and washrooms but in many stretches you have skeletal facilities. In some others, especially remote areas, wayside amenities are non-existent. So we decided to come out with a policy that has set uniform standard,” said an official.

The highways ministry will invite private players to build,operate and maintain the facilities for a fixed number of years. “We are exploring various modes of developing such facilities and augmenting the existing facilities,” another ministry official added.

On Friday while launching the Rs 30,000 crore Sethu Bharatam programme that envisages building new bridges and overhauling old ones, Prime Minister Narendra Modi also spoke about the emphasis on providing quality wayside amenities to highway commuters.

“We will soon hold a meeting with all stakeholders including private developers to get their views on the draft policy,” said a ministry official.

The ministry is exploring various modes of developing these services. These include development, operations and maintenance on a public-private partnership mode, where private developers would be given land to build and run such a facility for 15-20 year concession period.

For highway stretches that are not financially viable, the ministry is ready to try out the EPC(Engineering Procurement contract) mode where the government provides 100% funding for building the wayside amenities.

The ministry is also looking at incentivising petrol or diesel retail outlet owners on national highways for upgrading the quality of basic toilet-cum-drinking water facilities being provided.

 

Sources: Hindustan Times

Government of India to increase National Highway cover to 2 lakh kilometres

March 8, 2016

In order to address the rising vehicle congestion in the country, Union Minister Nitin Gadkari has announced that the national highway cover will be increased from the current 96,000 kilometres to 2 lakh kilometres. He said that a formula has been devised based on vehicular traffic movement, according to which four-lane, six-lane and express highways will be developed.

Gadkari said, “At present, we have 96,000km national highways or 52 lakh km road length in the country. As much as 40 per cent of the traffic moves on these 2 per cent national highways and as a result, five lakh accidents take place.”

Smooth sailing, despite what it looks like

“Three lakh people get injured and 1.5 lakh are killed in these accidents. The main reason is traffic congestion. Therefore, to save lives of people and diversify traffic, our Government has decided to extend national highways from 96,000 km to two lakh km. Nearly 70 per cent to 80 per cent traffic of the country move on this,” he further added.

He also said that in the state of Uttar Pradesh, the total length of national highways was 8,483km of which 4,500km was with the National Highway Authority of India (NHAI) and 3,134km was with state Public Works Department. “In the next two months, we have decided to expand this 8,483km to 17,000km which is double. Few proposals have been submitted by the state government and others by MPs and MLAs.”

Additionally, two new highways will be developed in Uttar Pradesh. “First is east-west highway on which we are going to spend Rs 1,400 crore. This will reduce Delhi’s traffic by 50 per cent. The second one is from Delhi to Dasna, which would be 14-lane, a first time in the country,” he said. Gadkari mentioned that while earlier it took around 2-3 hours to travel from Delhi to Meerut, it will now take only 40 minutes

An access control highway connecting Lucknow to Kanpur has also been planned, which would reduce travel time between the two cities to 40 minutes. Gadkari said that 10 projects are likely to be awarded in the next three months with an investment of Rs 4,000 crore each.

 

Sources:Overdrive.in

 

Banks may get to lend to NPA highway projects

March 8, 2016

In what may come as a major relief for the highway sector, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) is expected to allow banks and financial institutions to lend o companies even if a project turns into a non-performing asset.

Sources said the indication came during a meeting between governor Raghuram Rajan and NHAI chairman in Mumbai. The RBI governor told Chandra that the central bank has come out with a circular, clarifying that a project becoming NPA will not result in choking of fund flow and it will not translate into lenders stopping loans, sources added. “We were told hat when any investment becomes NPA, the financial institutions have to provide additional funds for this. They need to deal with such project carefully rather than stopping release of loan. They will provide us this circular,” said an NHAI official.

 A loan is classified as an NPA if a borrower fails to pay installments for 90 days. “Usually highway projects become NPA for a certain period. As toll revenue starts flowing or vehicle flow increases, the project becomes viable,” said an official.
Although Chandra also took up the issue of priority sector status for highway projects with Rajan, RBI has said that too many sectors are now seeking this status.
Source: Times Of India

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