A lot can happen in a week and the stock market reflected all of it. Indices dived in deep depression at the government’s failure to recognise the economic and financial distress, compounded by harassment over tax systems.
Finance minister (FM) Nirmala Sitharaman’s mini Budget, tax rollbacks, liquidity for banks and housing finance companies, along with an assurance to release tax refunds and reduce harassment, led to a sudden surge in optimism.
However, by 27th August, the optimism was quickly eroded after the government took away Rs1.76 lakh crore of Reserve Bank of India (RBI) reserves, especially when Ms Sitharaman said, “I cannot comment on what the funds transferred by RBI will be used for.”
After all, there is a massive shortfall in government tax revenues (coincidence or not, estimated at around Rs170,000 crore) and a hidden fiscal deficit estimated by experts at Rs176,000 crore. Then there are massive holes outside Central government finances too, such as Food Corporation of India, power distribution companies, and the vast debt and contingent liabilities accumulated by the National Highway Authority of India (NHAI).
Almost exactly a year after the giant Infrastructure Leasing & Financial Services (IL&FS) had began to default on its debt of nearly Rs100,000 crore, the FM, Ms Sitharaman has announced plans for a new organisation “to provide credit enhancement for infrastructure and housing projects with an aim to enhance fund flows towards such projects.”
Remember, this has been planned even as the failed IL&FS is nowhere near resolution. Technically, a few of the 347 companies (the existence of half of these was unknown to all government regulators and auditors until after the board was sacked) have been shut down; but not a single sale has been fully completed as yet.
Meanwhile, NHAI’s gigantic debt, contingent liabilities, stalled projects and web of litigation across the country, are turning into the biggest roadblock to infrastructure development. Union minister Nitin Gadkari has ignored this for five years, even as he criss-crossed the country announcing mega projects with massive outlays. Reports that the prime minister’s office (PMO) has rapped the ministry for extensive and ‘reckless’ highway expansion, finally, led to a much-needed public discussion last week.
NHAI has reportedly been asked to discontinue construction of roads and monetise assets; this has happened only after NHAI’s debt soared from Rs40,000 crore in 2014 to an unsustainable Rs1.78 lakh crore in 2019 under Mr Gadkari’s watch.
The rating agency, ICRA Ltd, attributes this to the increased cost of land acquisition and has reaffirmed NHAI’s high ratings confident that “support from the Government of India (both financially and operationally) would be crucial for maintaining the credit profile of NHAI.” But ICRA’s rating rationale of May 2019 is oblivious about the extent of NHAI’s contingent liabilities. The rating agency has a number of Rs63,000 crore, which it considers ‘sizeable’, when the real figure may be five times larger!
In an interview to CNBC-TV, Brijeshwar Singh, former NHAI chairman, said that the contingent liability could be in excess of Rs3 lakh crore! According to an industry veteran, “Most highway companies are listed and rated. All of them have claims against NHAI in their books. Even if you discount these claims to 70%, the contingent liability would add up to over Rs3 lakh crore.”
This source tells me that this huge liability is because NHAI is not in the habit of releasing payments to contractors and concessionaires easily. It has thousands of disputes under arbitration, conciliation and litigation pending with most major contractors across India.
Way back in 2014, a top audit firm had pointed out that NHAI is one of the biggest litigants in Indian courts. At that time, it had over 5,000 cases pending in various courts and another 200 in the Supreme Court. The number may have easily doubled.
Most disputes are over cost overruns, usually caused by long delays in land acquisition and obtaining various approvals and clearances which, often, turned projects unviable even before construction commenced.
This has made many companies wary about dealing with NHAI; some private operators have found ways to ensure that costs are inflated or their contracts include dubious clauses, that allow them to even change the scope of the projects on ‘mutually accepted basis’. Eventually, India pays the price in terms of high infrastructure costs.
Disputes with NHAI are also a hurdle in the resolution of IL&FS. The government is understood to have set up a committee to look into these issues. While the IL&FS group debt is nearly Rs100,000 crore, the previous management had claimed that Rs17,000 crore was due from NHAI.
IL&FS’s new management is also struggling to reconcile the vast gap between the erstwhile management’s claims against NHAI and MoRTH (ministry of road transport and highways) and arrive at a smaller, but realistic estimate.
I learn that, unless IL&FS can resolve the legal tangles with NHAI, it will struggle to find buyers for several of the road projects. This means that NHAI, a government entity, is now a stumbling block to resolution.
With funds having dried up, the infrastructure industry is worried about NHAI being able to generate enough cash to service interest payments without constant government support. Its participation in the over-ambitious Bharatmala Pariyojana project, involving a phase-1 project outlay of Rs5.35 lakh crore, may also be canned. Of this, 19,800km of roads were to be built by the public sector giant.
NHAI, set up to implement the golden quadrilateral project under Atal Bihari Vajpayee government, has steadily become a dysfunctional and corrupt organisation. Part of the problem may also be that NHAI’s powers have been steadily diluted, affecting decision-making. Failure to fulfil its responsibility of ensuring timely land acquisition, shifting of utilities, environment and forest clearances, along with flawed processes led to disputes that ended up in a legal quagmire.
In 2015, Union minister Nitin Gadkari set up a committee for revamping NHAI. The committee’s main recommendations were to empower the board, change the method of awarding contracts (moving away from the least-cost model to the average-bid principle using standard deviation), find ways to revive stalled projects, set up a dispute resolution board to resolve issues faster, and streamline its project evaluation and project financing practices. A simultaneous study was commissioned on setting up an Expressway Development Board of India and for taking up construction work abroad.
None of the recommendations of this committee has seen the light of day. That Mr Gadkari was blissfully unaware of the looming crisis is evident from NHAI’s spending spree and spiralling debt. Mr Gadkari has continued to announce new projects that were unviable from the word go due to high land acquisition costs.
In 2017, speaking at an event, he said the government was planning Rs8 lakh crore investment in 30 rural connectivity projects of which five were set to begin. “I have no problem of money… if banks take too much time in granting approvals, we will offer them as EPC (engineering-procurement-construction mode) projects, he said.
He also announced plans to build an additional lane on national highways every three years entailing an investment of Rs80,000 crore to cater to ‘ever increasing’ traffic load.
Mr Gadkari was making these statements even when it was clear that bank funds for infrastructure were drying up; we now know that IL&FS was groaning under a massive debt taken for unviable projects and already resorting to financial jugglery.
The minister had no such worries. He said NHAI would make an IPO (initial public offering) to raise funds and bragged that it could raise Rs10 lakh crore. Although there was no IPO, in July this year, LIC was asked to provide Rs30,000 crore to NHAI by subscribing to bonds. Meanwhile, in the same month, Mr Gadkari told the Rajya Sabha that he planned to create a separate finance arm for the NHAI for which he would seek the finance ministry’s permission.
In fact, this was part of the recommendations made by a committee in February 2016; but, surely, that ship had sailed after the IL&FS crisis. Mr Gadkari neither knew nor cared. He hasn’t had a word to say on the entire IL&FS imbroglio, although his ministry worked closely with the cabal that drove that hydra-headed giant monster into a debt trap.
What is the solution to this mammoth financial muddle at NHAI? One silver lining is that the PMO seems aware of this problem with principal secretary Nipendra Mishra holding multiple meetings to sort out NHAI’s issues -- something that ought to have been Mr Gadkari’s responsibility.
NHAI is running out of options. Hopefully, the deep crisis, and the PM’s dreams of infrastructure development, will finally force a real clean-up. The question is: Will the PMO be able to find a solution that does not involve taxing the people further?
NHAI kept on wasting funds on upgrading small towns roads having meagre traffic in the desert of Rajasthan.
NO NHAI road is free of life threatening sharp curves due to extreme corruption in hiring experts to pwd retired engineers having no actual experience of design,construction.
The BJP Govt has been trying to compete with China by constructing waste in the name of advancement not to be used for another twenty years. The government has been too fast to go by the what could be digested and assimilated in within our social, cultural and economic mind set. The expectation of a GDP growth of more nearly 8% within a short period of 4-5 years has proved Utopian. The best rate of 'slow and steady' of Indian economy to grow is 3% to 4% that would have given better dividends to the nation.
Today, there is tremendous gap between the income and expenditure status of the country leading to wide gap between the poor and the rich capitalists. The citizens of India has to know and work for "Search for Market Failures" as consumer of the services of the government under the specific political leadership and educate them on the way out.
NHAI has always been useless. Without its own cadre (the bane of governance in India), and staffed with engineers on deputation from PWDs of different states, it always relied heavily on consultants. The biggest corruption was in fact during 1998 to 2004 when everything in Golden Q and East West North South Corridors was built using the crazy item rate contracting. They started standarising RFPs and contracts and looking at PPPs only thereafter... contracts became bigger and bigger ... so did their greed...
1- Can such massive infrastructure projects be driven merely on the basis of the funding from Commercial Banks ?
2- The problem in most cases is that the Govt companies (listed or otherwise) and organisations like NHAI have penchant for litigations as well as extraordinary delays in releasing payments. The basic premise for such a tendency is to 'act safe' rather than basing the decision on commercial and/ or principle of service to the nation. As it happens, there can be genuine reasons in some cases but how much is due to apathy and corruption, one cant tell. The Govt has to be a facilitator and in governance rather than sitting as a businessman! By such dual personality it ends up being inefficient in every role.
3- Is the tax payer ( even the poorest of the poor is bearing some or the other tax) to go on paying the price for all kinds of follies happening ?
4- Lastly, it comes as a shock : : (i) that the Ministry didn't have one thought in their mind as to from where the funds are going to come before making the grand announcements (ii) Is there indeed any review being taken periodically about the liabilities of the NHAI ?
Sir
It is blatant truth .The country is facing huge fiscal deficit .FM N Seetharaman saying that she does not know how the huge amount of Rs 1.73 lac crore released by RBI will be utilized is adding fuel to the fire Goodness
Point is plundering by all political parties has resulted in debt trap with scant regard to the interest of the nation as a whole
The scams of ruling party are hushed up
Then at the end of the day common man has to bear the brunt
Valiant attempts are made by the Modi government to the stem the rot
The staggering amount of NPA of these undertaking is staring us on the face
The situation in infrastructure development & financing has come to sorry state of affairs. Which bank or which private company/group will put its money,forget about any investors. DFI's like IDBI,ICICI Ltd,IFCI are already extinct. IDFC,specially created for the same is no longer active.
Fiercely independent and pro-consumer information on personal finance.
1-year online access to the magazine articles published during the subscription period.
Access is given for all articles published during the week (starting Monday) your subscription starts. For example, if you subscribe on Wednesday, you will have access to articles uploaded from Monday of that week.
This means access to other articles (outside the subscription period) are not included.
Articles outside the subscription period can be bought separately for a small price per article.
Fiercely independent and pro-consumer information on personal finance.
30-day online access to the magazine articles published during the subscription period.
Access is given for all articles published during the week (starting Monday) your subscription starts. For example, if you subscribe on Wednesday, you will have access to articles uploaded from Monday of that week.
This means access to other articles (outside the subscription period) are not included.
Articles outside the subscription period can be bought separately for a small price per article.
Fiercely independent and pro-consumer information on personal finance.
Complete access to Moneylife archives since inception ( till the date of your subscription )
NO NHAI road is free of life threatening sharp curves due to extreme corruption in hiring experts to pwd retired engineers having no actual experience of design,construction.
Today, there is tremendous gap between the income and expenditure status of the country leading to wide gap between the poor and the rich capitalists. The citizens of India has to know and work for "Search for Market Failures" as consumer of the services of the government under the specific political leadership and educate them on the way out.
2- The problem in most cases is that the Govt companies (listed or otherwise) and organisations like NHAI have penchant for litigations as well as extraordinary delays in releasing payments. The basic premise for such a tendency is to 'act safe' rather than basing the decision on commercial and/ or principle of service to the nation. As it happens, there can be genuine reasons in some cases but how much is due to apathy and corruption, one cant tell. The Govt has to be a facilitator and in governance rather than sitting as a businessman! By such dual personality it ends up being inefficient in every role.
3- Is the tax payer ( even the poorest of the poor is bearing some or the other tax) to go on paying the price for all kinds of follies happening ?
4- Lastly, it comes as a shock : :
(i) that the Ministry didn't have one thought in their mind as to from where the funds are going to come before making the grand announcements
(ii) Is there indeed any review being taken periodically about the liabilities of the NHAI ?
It is blatant truth .The country is facing huge fiscal deficit .FM N Seetharaman saying that she does not know how the huge amount of Rs 1.73 lac crore released by RBI will be utilized is adding fuel to the fire Goodness
Point is plundering by all political parties has resulted in debt trap with scant regard to the interest of the nation as a whole
The scams of ruling party are hushed up
Then at the end of the day common man has to bear the brunt
Valiant attempts are made by the Modi government to the stem the rot
The staggering amount of NPA of these undertaking is staring us on the face