Mr Nitin Gadkari, Union Minister for Road Transport and Highways and Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises, has said that the government intends setting up 22 Green Express Highways at a cost of Rs 10 lakh crore across the country. He invited Singaporean companies to invest in these highways and also look at setting up logistics and industrial parks around them. The Minister was speaking at the ‘Singapore Symposium 2019 – India and Singapore: Partners in a Connected World’ organised by the Institute of South Asian Studies (ISAS), National University of Singapore in cooperation with the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) and the Ananta Aspen Centre in New Delhi last week.
Mr Gadkari pointed out that the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) has a AAA rating, and Singaporean companies could seek to form joint ventures with it for road development. He added that his Ministry was also seeking to develop inland waterways as a major mode of transportation of goods. Already inland waterways are being used to transport goods from Varanasi in Uttar Pradesh to Haldia in West Bengal. The idea was to extend this waterway to Myanmar via the Brahmaputra river, he said.
