Multi-year contracts allowed for small projects
KATHMANDU:
More than 900 small road projects have received permission from the government for their implementation under multi-year contracts. These projects include regional, tourist, prospective strategic and provincial roads that are being constructed in different parts of the country.
The move is expected to help gather momentum of road infrastructure development works and save time as there will be no need to sign a contract each year. As of last fiscal year, these types of small road projects were being carried out under one-year contracts.
The Department of Roads (DoR) has informed about the same to all its five regional road directorate offices, giving them authority to sign multi-year contracts with contractors while ensuring they remain within budget size projected for three fiscal years (2014-15 to 2016-17).
Laxmi Dutta Bhatta, chief of Project Monitoring and Evaluation Unit at DoR, said that the provision was focused on intensifying the project work. For example, if a road project has been allocated Rs 10 million for the current fiscal year, regional road directorate now can sign multi-year contract below the threshold of Rs 30 million for three fiscal years. Regional road offices will be able to sign contracts and seek the required budget for the current fiscal year.
The small projects that have been permitted to carry out under multi-year contracts include four Priority One (P1) projects, namely ‘Regional and Tourist Roads’, ‘Prospective Strategic Roads’, ‘Mithila Sector Road Improvement Project’ and ‘Probable Provincial Road’.
“There are a total of 838 road projects under the Regional and Tourist Roads,” said Bhatta. As per him, each of these projects is receiving funds ranging from Rs 1.4 million to Rs 1.7 million in the current fiscal year.
Charali-Kechana Ring Road (Jhapa), Saljhandi-Panitanki-Jarlewa (Rupandehi) and Benighat-Tinmane-Pokharithok Tourist Road (Gorkha) are some examples of projects that are being constructed under the Regional and Tourist Roads category.There are 47 projects under Prospective Strategic Roads, including Tansen Bypass Road (Palpa) and Ugratara-Melauli Road (Dadeldhura). Each project in this category has been allocated Rs 20 million for this fiscal.
Under Mithila Sector Road Improvement Project, the government has been implementing eight road projects by providing Rs 10 million to each project for this fiscal year.
Similarly, a total of 36 road projects are underway through Probable Provincial Road programme. Such possible provincial road projects include Mugu-Simikot, Mirchaiya-Katari-Ghurmi and Bardibas-Jaleshwor roads.
The Ministry of Physical Infrastructure and Transport (MoPIT) officials said that since signing multi-year contracts would also mean more spending, the provision will help increase capital expenditure and is expected to create jobs at the local level.
The multi-year contract is already in practice in national pride projects and other P1 projects that have already been approved by National Planning Commission (NPC). The government in the budget for current fiscal year had also talked of carrying out other projects under multi-year contracts.
DoR had permitted its regional offices to go for multi-year contracts for small projects after receiving agreement in principle from recently held secretary level meeting of MoPIT.
Source: THT
