JICA bid to fund E-way scrapped

The Maharashtra State Road Development Corporation (MSRDC) has scrapped the Japanese International Cooperation Agency (JICA)’s proposal to fund the 800-km Mumbai-Nagpur Super Expressway.

JICA had talks with the state government back in August 2015, during chief minister Devendra Fadnavis’s visit to Japan, and it had shown keen interest in funding major infrastructure projects in the state.

JICA is already funding the 22-km-long Mumbai Trans-Harbour Link (MTHL)-Sewri and Nhava (Chirle) sealink where it is to sign an agreement with the Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA) of funding Rs 15,000 crore which is 80 per cent of the project cost. The total cost of MTHL is Rs 17,500 crore.

“The reason behind scrapping the proposal of JICA is because the Japanese government takes a lot of time to give clearances and also the internal process of JICA is very lengthy, which could result in the project getting delayed,”said an MSRDC bureaucrat.

“Taking lessons from other agencies experience like that of MMRDA with JICA, we think relying on Japanese funds could delay the project. Also, one of the reasons of not exploring the proposal by JICA is that we have to meet the deadline of 2019 set by the chief minister. We have fast-tracked the work and have closed the financial and technical bids of the four out of five packages in which the detailed project report (DPR) is going to be prepared. We are aiming to prepare a DPR in the next four months,” he added.

The expressway is estimated to cost a whopping Rs 30,000 crore, which could increase.

It will connect the financial capital with the chief minister’s hometown and pass through Ghoti, Aurangabad and Amravati, which will reduce the travel time between Mumbai and Nagpur to 10 hours from the existing 17 hours.

“We are exploring proposals of various international agencies and out of which one agency each from Australia and Canada are in the fray, as their proposals are quite feasible,” said the MSRDC bureaucrat.

“We also have financial proposals from international banks of Germany and Gulf. Funds are not going to be an issue as the project is partly also going to funded by the Union ministry of road transport and highways,” he further added.