ISLAMABAD – The National Highway Council (NHC) has approved a ‘critical’ amendment in the rules of the Road Maintenance Account of the National Highway Authority and allowed it to spend ‘maintenance budget’ on new projects.
Road Maintenance Account caters the maintenance and operational needs of about fourteen thousand kilometres long road network of National Highways and Motorways through NHA’s indigenous revenue resources.
Earlier, there was a clear bar on the utilization of RMA funds on any new project as these funds were only meant for the needs of the maintenance of NHA’s huge network.
However, the incumbent regime wants to pull out a huge amount from this important account and wanted to spend it on some green field projects ie Sukkur-Hyderabad Motorway but RMA rules were a hurdle as there was no such provision in the rules in this regard.
Now, the NHC in its recent meeting held on Friday approved that investment in construction of roads and transport infrastructure projects including roadside facilities can be made as same is incorporated in rule-9, which deals with eligible expenditures from RMA account.
Initially, the board has approved 15 percent of the total annual revenue for investments but NHC is mandated to increase or decrease utilization under this head as well.
Sources inside the road authority claimed that allowing expenditure from the RMA account on new projects would simply put the entire national road network at risk. They claimed that the amendment paved a way for an access to this protected fund and the spending would not remain up to the 15 percent but now there would be no limit to it.
They informed that the incumbent Minister for Communications Abdul Aleem Khan is ambitious to take up Sukkur-Hyderabad Motorway at any cost as soon as possible but the federal government is reluctant to make a considerable allocation for the said project due to shrinking fiscal space.
Resultantly, on the active pursuance of the incumbent minister, the critical amendment is made in RMA rules, which will enable an access on RMA funds for not only this project but even any other politically motivated schemes could be funded through maintenance funds.
As per the claim of NHA, an amount of Rs108 billion was collected by its revenue section in previous year however it is yet to be verified through official documents.
Earlier, the federal government constructed new roads through its federal public sector development programme or some of the projects were funded through foreign aid and public private partnerships.
Once the project was completed, the NHA was mandated to keep the asset maintained and the only source to maintain and rehabilitate the existing network was RMA.
Meanwhile, as per the new amendment, 40 percent of the total annual revenue would be spent on periodic maintenance, 10 percent for the establishment and employees related expenditures, 5 percent for the bridges and culverts, 3 percent for the contingencies while 1 percent for media to project revenue enhancement initiatives.
