ISLAMABAD   -   The National Highway Authority has decided to double its revenue for next financial year by setting an ambitious target of Rs104 billion to mitigate growing financial needs of maintaining its 12000km long national road network. 

It was informed by the Chairman NHA Arshad Majeed Mohmand, who is chasing the subject of revenue enhancement since his appointment in the road authority and now got patronage as the incumbent federal minister for communications Abdul Aleem Khan also desired to make NHA self sustainable.

NHA do maintenance of its entire road network through its own resources but the actual needs to keep such an huge network up to the mark are much higher than the amount collected by the road authority every year.

As per the data, NHA collected Rs51.69 billion in last financial year while it had showed Rs48.86 billion as earning in the first 10 months of the current fiscal year.

Mohmand claimed that he has tasked the concerned formations to chalk out a comprehensive plan to achieve the aforementioned revenue collection target by employing multilateral strategy.

“Only enhancing the toll rates is not a feasible way or even an achievement but we are working to find out new revenue streams,” he maintained.

It is pertinent to mention here that after holding over the same rates for last three years, the road authority has recently increased the toll rates up to 40 percent on national highways and motorways with effect from 1st July 2024. 

Chairman NHA said that we have marked about 50 new locations to install toll plazas as law permits us in this regard.

He however explained that in addition to toll collection, we are expecting a huge revenue from right of way section by imposing road access fee from different amenities.

He said we are rationalising the ROW fee to get maximum number of amenities onboard to create a permanent source of income for NHA while the procedure to grant NOC to private ventures on Motorways would also make reasonable. 

The Chairman NHA said that Motorway Police is hiring new workforce that would eventually be deployed on road network across the country and we are expecting revenue enhancement under the head of police fine as well.

It is pertinent to mention here that about 13 percent of the total revenue of NHA is collected through the road users over the violation of traffic rules and with additional deployment, the revenue will be enhanced.