Around 360 km was added daily to the country's road network in 2016 in comparison to 170 km in 2013-14, says the latest report released by the Union ministry of road transport and highways.
The country's road network increased from 54.02 lakh km in 2013-14 to 56.03 lakh km in 2015-16 following the increase in construction of national highways (NH) and rural roads under the Prime Minister Grameen Sadak Yojana (PMGSY).
The country's road network includes national highways, state highways, district, urban and rural roads, says a report on "Basic Road Statistics of India".
The investment on road sector by both private and government has doubled from Rs 59,134 crore 2013-14 to Rs 98,988 crore in 2015-16. The length of NHs has also gone up from 91,287 km to 1,01,011 km during the same period. The share of four-lane and above roads has also gone up, says the report.
"Various construction programmes for different classes of roads over the past two-and-a-half years have yielded a significant expansion in the network. Efforts are being made for a balanced development of road network (primary, secondary and tertiary systems)", said an official in the ministry.
Compared to several developed countries in the world, the paved roads are less in India. The paved/surfaced road length in India was 62.5% of the total road length which was lower when compared to United Kingdom (100), Korea (84.9) and Russian Federation (70.60).
However, the NHs in India, which accounted for 1.76 % of the total length as on March 31, 2016, was much lower than that of some of the developed countries like Japan, Korea Republic, UK and Brazil.
To increase the construction of the roads, the Centre has been increasing the budgetary allocation for road sector for the past few years. In 2016-17, of the total Rs 1. 28 lakh crore targetted expenditure on the road sector, around Rs 90,470 crore has been spent so far, said the official.