NHA playing vital role in improving connectivity and competitiveness of businesses: Economic Survey

ISLAMABAD: National Highway Authority (NHA) has been playing a vital role in improving the productivity and competitiveness of businesses, and the quality of travel with an emphasis on safety, apart from creating job opportunities, said Economic Survey 2019-2020 release here on Thursday.

Pakistan is virtually bisected into two halves by River Indus and the Eastern segment is historically well developed.

For better East-West connectivity, numerous bridges have been constructed across river Indus, Jhelum, Chenab, Ravi, and Sutlej.

Currently, there are three North-South corridors N-5 (Grand Trunk Road,N-55 (Indus Highway) and Motorway M-1 (Peshawar-Islamabad), M-2 (Islamabad-Lahore), M-4 (Panda Bhatia-Faisalabad-Gogra-Shorkot-Khanewal-Multan), M5 (Multan-Sukkur), and M-9 ( Karachi Hyderabad Motorway) whereby M6( Sukkur-Hyderabad Motorway) is being planned on Build-Operate-Transfer mode) with only N55 on the western side of River Indus.

A newly planned Western corridor of CPEC is being executed, which is at different stages of implementation.

The present NHA network comprises of 39 national highways, motorways, expressways and strategic roads.

The existing portfolio of NHA consists of 40 on-going projects with an allocation of Rs. 117,514.836 million in PSDP 2019-20 out of which Rs. 57,371.916 million is the Foreign Exchange Component (FEC) and Rs. 60,142.919 million is the local component.

To ensure smooth and efficient movement of goods and passengers while ensuring safety, NHA is planning and executing Khunjrab to Gwadar connectivity under the China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC).

The CPEC projects include Havelian-Thakot (N-35), Multan-Sukkur already completed and Operational, 3 Hakla-D.I. Khan Motorway, under construction, Yarik- Zhob portion of N-50, PC-I approved by ECNEC, Zhob- Quetta portion of N-50 under tendering , Hoshab-Awaran section 400 km at design stage.

NHA has already constructed green field segments of Motorway network viz M-1 (Peshawar-Islamabad), M-2 (Islamabad-Lahore), M-3 (Lahore-Abdul-Hakim), M-4 (Pindi Bhattian-Faisalabad-Gojra-Shorkot-Khanewal-Multan), M5 (Multan-Sukkur), E35 (Hassan Abdal-Havelian-Mansehra-Thakot) and M11 (Lahore-Sialkot) boosting economic activities.

NHA is now constructing Hakla-Dera Ismail Khan and plans to execute M-8 (HoshabAwaran-Khuzdar). Public-Private Partnership Authority has approved construction of M6 (Sukkur-Hyderabad) on BoT basis.