With the implementation of Fastag based toll collection at the toll plaza at National Highway (NH), the toll collection of NHAI is expected to increase by Rs 15,000 crore during the next financial year. This will reduce NHAI's dependence on the government next year and it may increase the speed of road projects on its own. For some time, apprehensions were being expressed about the NHAI's financial condition. While Road Transport and Highways Minister Nitin Gadkari have been continuously dismissing these fears. Gadkari was aware of the increase in toll collection, as he knew that under the fastag implementation, the under-reporting of the collection at the toll plaza could be curbed and the entire amount of his share would start coming to NHAI's account. According to the road ministry officials, the daily toll collection on national highways has increased from Rs 60 crore to Rs 90 crore as of 31 December due to the fastag. In this way, the toll collection has increased by 50 percent. This increase is so far that only 1.15 crore vehicles have fast-tracked, 54 percent of the total vehicles running on national highways.
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Recently, fastags are seen in one lakh vehicles daily. These numbers will increase further in the coming days and in three months about 90 percent of the vehicles will become fast. Whereas in six months, 100 percent of vehicles are expected to fast. With this, the daily toll collection of NHAI is expected to increase from Rs 110 to 120 crores. This means that till now, where NHAI used to get only 21-22 thousand crore rupees annually from toll. At the same time, it may get double or even more toll after the implementation of Fastag. It is evident that this will increase the confidence of NHAI along with road construction companies and banks and financial institutions and they will come forward to invest capital in road projects. This will increase the sluggish pace of road construction in the country for some time. The second benefit of the increase in toll collection would be NHAI in the monetization of finished road projects and also in TOT contracts. Because of the greed for more toll collection, companies will make big bids. This will also reduce the pressure on the government to increase budgetary support to NHAI.
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Before Fastag, the electronic toll collection (ETC) system was not implemented even though full toll collection was not taking place. Cash and card payments were made at toll plazas and toll collection data was fed to human labor in computers. The employees of the contractor company did not feed the data of the cash paying drivers into the computer and hand them the hand-made receipts, or hold the receipts on unauthorized computers. Apart from this, many drivers used to avoid toll payment on the strength of rash and bullying. The implementation of FASTAG has started to curb such cases, resulting in better toll collection.
