Road developers in the engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) segment could see their revenue growth halve in the ongoing fiscal and the next. The decline would be largely due to slower awarding of projects and delayed receipt of ‘appointed date’ – which is the kickoff date for start of a project – from the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI), Crisil said in a statement. “Road developers…could see revenue growth halve in fiscals 2020 and 2021 to 15 per cent, compared with 30 per cent in fiscal 2019,” it said. The NHAI awarded a whopping 7,400 km in fiscal 2018, which slowed down the following year to about 2,200 km. In the current fiscal and the next, awarding is expected to be 4,000 km a year, Crisil said. “The delay in declaring appointed dates for the projects awarded, on the other hand, is primarily due to issues in land acquisition. Crisil’s analysis of 119 hybrid annuity model (HAM) projects shows almost 30 per cent of these have not received appointed dates more than a year after these were awarded,” Crisil Ratings Senior Director Sachin Gupta said.

(Economic Times)