To meet the maintenance cost of the national highways and motorways, the government has allowed National Highway Authority (NHA) to increase the toll rates, said Chairman NHA Sikander Qayyum.
He stated this while briefing the Senate Subcommittee on Communication which met here on Tuesday under the chairmanship of Senator Mian Ateeq Ahmed.
The NHA chairman further said the toll rates at Islamabad-Peshawar and Islamabad-Lahore motorways would see three to four times increase in the coming years compared to the rates that were in effect over 15 to 20 years ago. He said the Authority needed Rs 92 billion annually for the maintenance and renovation of highways and increase in toll fee was inevitable to meet those expenses.
Qayyum said toll rates had been "increased proportionately in accordance with the terms of contract and the average number of vehicles using the motorway."
The panel was informed that from Islamabad to Lahore via GT Road seven toll plazas are set and during 2016-17, Rs 2.6 billion were collected as toll fee from those plazas, in 2017-18, Rs 2.85 billion toll fee from those plazas was generated, while Rs 1.35 billion were spent on the maintenance of the Rawalpindi to Lahore GT Road.
The committee was told that entire toll fee collection was deposited in a single bank account.
Senator Mian Ateeq Ahmed said it was asked form chairman NHA under which law the authority had increased the toll fee manifold, adding it was Rs 175 from Rawalpindi to Lahore via motorway which now had jumped to Rs 750 on the same route. The panel was informed that toll fee charges are being reviewed after three years.
The chairman NHA said Public Procurement Regulatory Authority (PPRA) rules were applicable on all the companies operating in Pakistan and no company was exempted from it, adding that no contract was awarded to any company without meeting the PPRA criteria, excluding Build Transfer and Operate (BOT) project. He said that on BOT so for four projects had been completed and another 11 projects under BOT were in the pipeline.
He said toll rates of M-1 (Islamabad-Peshawar Motorway) would go up from Rs 80 to Rs 240 for cars, Rs 100 to Rs 400 for wagons, Rs 140 to Rs 550 for minibus and Rs 210 to 790 for buses (from the year 2005 to 2021).
The toll rates for M-2 (Islamabad-Lahore) Motorway have been fixed at Rs 750 for cars, Rs 1,250 for wagons, Rs 1,760 for minibus and Rs 2,510 for buses.
On the pending Metro Bus Project from Peshawar Morr to New Islamabad International Airport, he said two packages of the project were complete and work on the remaining two was in progress. Tentatively, the project would be completed by March 2020, the chairman NHA said.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2019