ISLAMABAD (Online) - The Executive Board of National Highway Authority (NHA) has criticized extreme delay in completion of projects in the country which were scheduled for 2008 and ordered for an inquiry to investigate the inordinate delay in these projects.

Meeting of NHA executive board was held here on Monday in which Chairman NHA Syed Muhammad Ali Gardezi briefed the members about progress on different ongoing projects in the country.
Chairman NHA Syed Muhammad Ali Gardezi has said that the construction work on Karachi-Hyderabad (M-9) motorway will be started in July 2012. M-9 is being constructed on BOT basis by Malaysian Company Binapuri costing Rs. 25 Billion. Chairman NHA told this in his opening remarks to the members of NHA Executive Board. In order to overcome the initial financial hiccups M/s. Binapuri has signed an MOU with Sindh Government to kick off the project, he added.
Chairman NHA told that a budget of Rs. 50.7 billion has been proposed for NHA in next financial year. The focus of NHA will be to complete the ongoing projects and no new project is being financed. He told that NHA has faced 50% cut in PSDP allocations for last two consecutive years which has badly hampered the progress of the projects. Cash starved NHA need regular inflow of allocated budget to complete the projects in time, he added.
The Executive Board discussed the progress on World Bank Assisted Rehabilitation project. The Executive Board was told that the project deals with improvement and rehabilitation of N-5 from Peshawar to Karachi covering 908 km of road segments. The Board was told that 15 projects were initiated out of which 13 have been completed and only 2 projects are ongoing.
The board also discussed the Road Maintenance Accounts (RMA) of NHA, Revision of NHA’s Public Private Partnership (PPP) and other administrative matters.